


dearer than peace

by specficslut (homosociality)



Series: home as a borderless metaphor [5]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alpha Charles Xavier, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Anal Gaping, Angst with a Happy Ending, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Gang Rape, Hurt Erik Lehnsherr, Hurt/Comfort, Infanticide, Knotting, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Erik Lehnsherr, Rape, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 70,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25965343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociality/pseuds/specficslut
Summary: As the mate of Sebastian Shaw, who deposed his father and took his throne for himself, Erik has lost everything that once mattered to him. All he lives for is his children. When nomadic Genosha is defeated by Westchester, Erik expects the worst from the conquering King--but instead finds kindness, friendship, and even love.AU ofdeeper than swords (the sun and stars remix)where Shaw mated Erik himself instead of bartering him to Westchester.
Relationships: Azazel (X-Men)/Erik Lehnsherr, Emma Frost/Erik Lehnsherr, Erik Lehnsherr & Wanda Maximoff & Pietro Maximoff, Erik Lehnsherr/Cain Marko, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Janos Quested, Erik Lehnsherr/Sebastian Shaw, Jean Grey & Erik Lehnsherr, Victor Creed/Erik Lehnsherr
Series: home as a borderless metaphor [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1868485
Comments: 303
Kudos: 303





	1. I: i am eager to be gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/gifts).
  * Inspired by [deeper than swords (the sun and stars remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25236280) by [specficslut (homosociality)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociality/pseuds/specficslut). 
  * Inspired by [Tribute to the Horde](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8557168) by [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/pseuds/Gerec). 



> ETA: [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame) has kindly offered to write [brief summaries](https://docs.google.com/document/d/16nPKy_zw7QEoLHvHR_dVcj4E6MHTTm0T0_KMPO7u6BA/edit) of each chapter in Part One for anyone who doesn't want to deal with the graphic dark content but is still interested in the lighter aspects of this story!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: ritual gang-rape feat. voyeurism and anal gaping.
> 
> Chapter title from "Sorrow Home," by Margaret Walker.

PART ONE  
  
  
  
The afternoon of his wedding, Shaw comes into Erik’s tent, forces him to his hands and knees, and fucks him until he’s gushing. He’s just taken the herbs that will induce his heat, and isn’t in full heat yet, so Shaw doesn’t knot him. What Erik will discover about his tastes later suggests that Shaw doesn’t want the blood to give away that he’s defiled his virgin bride before the wedding itself, not that he has any concern for his well-being. But Shaw, too, can’t bear taking Erik as a mate in a way that leaves the honors of his station intact. As one final strike against Erik’s father, he’s plundered Erik’s virginity in private, without the proper rites, and ensured that Erik will go to his wedding a whore instead of a virgin, even if only the two of them know it. For Erik, it will be only the first of many indignities. This is the rest of his life. He stares at the ground and tries not to think too hard about that.

Shaw cleans him up almost tenderly and presses a kiss to his forehead. Perfunctorily, Erik tries to claw at his eyes. “Now, now, none of that, my treasure,” Shaw says silkily, catching his wrists easily in one hand. “If you try that at the ceremony I’ll have you beaten and thrown to the dogs to mate.” He’s not joking, either. Erik knows that Shaw wants him, wants the status and security that mating the old chieftain’s son will bring, but wants him humiliated and sobbing even more. If Erik does even one thing to suggest that this whole farce of a marriage isn’t worth it, Shaw will discard him, and the torment of being raped now will pale in comparison to whatever Shaw decides to do to him then.

“I’m sorry,” Erik grits out.

Shaw raises an eyebrow. “Sorry…?”

“Sorry, _husband,_ ” Erik spits out.

Shaw smiles, cruel and cold, and rewards him with a condescending pat on the head. “Remember your manners tonight, my treasure, and everything will be fine,” he says. And then he leaves Erik to climb back into his bed and shudder as he goes to undertake his own preparations for the wedding. 

At the feast, Erik can barely eat. He drinks from the mead cup, and deeply, until the world is spinning, until the stars wheel above his head in circles and blend into the light from the bonfires, and, at his side, Shaw lets him, seemingly amused at his nerves. At last, when the exhibition is over and the furs and pillows have been laid out, Shaw takes his hand, almost delicately, and leads him to his people, ringed around them. Swaying, Erik can’t bear to look at their faces. All of them stood by and did nothing as his family was slaughtered, his family who had led them to prosperity and triumph for generations. And yet Erik can’t blame them; he’s given up fighting too, hasn’t he? Shaw is too strong. Shaw has the strongest gift he’s ever seen. Erik has broken bones on Shaw’s impenetrable skin, has been brought to his knees gasping in pain from a tap on the shoulder.

Shaw undoes the lacing of his leggings and shoves them down. Erik stands there, bare before his people, and half-listens as Shaw intones, “With this mating I unite the dying dynasty with the rising one. Our children shall rule over the plains, from Westchester to Carnelia, from the Iron Sea to the Isle of the Sky. I ask you to bear witness, Nation of Genosha, as I bring this era of weakness to an end and midwife into being an era of strength! I ask you to pledge yourselves to my mate and his children, the future of Genosha!”

So much bullshit. Their dynasty died because Shaw _killed_ it, and will rape him in the ashes. Erik closes his eyes as the people around him roar. Maybe they’re faking their enthusiasm, the way he is. Shaw pushes him down to his knees, then steps back to the high table. Erik keeps his eyes closed as the crowd falls to a hush, as footsteps approach him.

The first general kneels in front of him, drags fingers through his hair, brings him close and kisses him.

Erik keeps his mouth slack and disinterested. He’s never been kissed before. His father was protective, the kind of traditionalist who would have liked Erik’s first kiss to be at his mating; Shaw hadn’t kissed him when he’d taken him that afternoon. The general bites at his lips until they’re stinging, sweeps their tongue inside and maps the interior of his mouth. Erik feels oddly distant from his body, as though he’s floating above it, watching his first kiss happen to someone else. The general draws away with a low chuckle—a man—and runs his fingers down Erik’s bare chest, tweaking a nipple along the way. Erik gasps as electric pleasure surges through him. Another chuckle.

Then something strong and flexible wraps around his wrists and Erik’s eyes fly open, because there’s no more pretending that this isn’t… what it is. Azazel grins at him, his tail dragging Erik’s wrists forward until he’s sprawled in his lap, and kisses him again, hands roving over his body this time, tracing patterns on Erik’s heat-sensitive skin. Against his will, he feels a little bit of slick drip out of him. Azazel groans, and Erik knows he can sense it, can scent it. “Blessed bearer,” he murmurs into Erik’s ear, “I honor you.”

Funny. Erik doesn’t feel very honored.

Azazel gropes for the laces of his breeches and shoves them down until his cock, hot and pulsing, is exposed. Erik stares at it. He’s seen cocks before, of course, but never one about to take him… Shaw had taken him from behind. This feels like an altogether different experience. Azazel leans back on his elbows and gestures forward, and Erik realizes with a flush of humiliation that he’s going to make Erik do the work. It would be cruel if Erik were a virgin; as it is, he kneels over Azazel and plunges himself down, staring him in the eye, and feels some sharp satisfaction when Azazel howls with pleasure. It doesn’t hurt—Shaw had loosened him that afternoon, and he’s in full heat now, endorphins rushing through his blood, carrying away the strain of sex and leaving just boneless pleasure in his wake. Furiously, Erik fucks himself on Azazel’s cock, as though if he rides him vigorously enough he’ll _win_ some kind of victory over Azazel, as though if he debases himself enough of the generals’ cocks it will transmute from debasement into triumph.

He loses time, bouncing on Azazel’s cock, barely hears the roar of the crowd as he spurts through his first orgasm with someone else, only notices that time has passed when Azazel seizes his hips and rolls him over. Erik fights instinctively, but Azazel yanks with his tail and before he can push back Erik is splayed on the ground, his hands held above his head and Azazel’s cock angled deep inside of him. Erik moans against his will, a high, thin sound, as Azazel plunges back into him, driving a fierce rhythm into his body, as he feels his hole twitch and contract around the base of Azazel’s cock, where a knot is growing. But Azazel is careful not to pierce him with the knot; that would be a grave breach in decorum. Erik turns his head, where Shaw and the rest of the generals are watching. Shaw is smirking, a hand stroking up and down his cock, and the others are naked and hard. He’s staring at Shaw when Azazel finds his release in him.

Azazel presses kisses to Erik’s collarbone and sternum. “Blessed bearer, my loyalty is yours,” he says, and stands and makes way for Janos.

Janos doesn’t speak; he signs the ritual words, then reaches for Erik. Azazel keeps his hands lashed together, which makes it difficult when Janos puts him on his knees; Erik’s face is buried in the furs, darkness and light braiding through his vision, as a second cock impales him. Janos thrusts leisurely, but with force, and without his hands Erik can get no leverage against him; he tries to dig his knees into the furs but they slide, gaining no purchase on the soft, plush surface, and so Erik resigns himself to simply being _used._ He drifts away again, focusing on the sticky-sweet aftertaste of mead on his tongue, not the pounding his inner walls are taking or Janos’s bruising grip on his hips. Above him, he hears Emma say something, but that can’t be right—

But then a hand buries itself in his hair and drags him up, and he’s eye-level with Emma’s hard and weeping cock. Emma rubs it against his lips, smearing pre-come over his mouth, and Erik realizes what is expected from him. His mouth opens, and Emma thrusts inside, deep enough that Erik wants to gag; he’s held up by Azazel’s tail around his wrists and Emma’s hand in his hair and there are two cocks inside of him and Erik feels sick, he wishes he were somewhere else, anywhere else. Emma pulls back mostly, rubs her cock against the inside of his cheek, strokes his face where the outline of it must be visible, then thrusts back inside.

At his ass, Janos has picked up the pace and is pounding into him furiously; each thrust jerks him forward and back, and when Emma and Janos find a moment of synchronicity, both plunging into him at the same time, the force draws a scream out of him, muffled on Emma’s cock as it is. He writhes fruitlessly against Azazel’s tail. Janos fucks him yet harder, each thrust forcing a groan out of him that Emma seems to appreciate, if the way she grinds her cock deeper into his throat is any indication, and then with a sigh spills into his wet, loose passage. He pulls back, letting Erik’s lower half sag onto the furs without anyone holding his hips up. Emma seems in no hurry to take her turn; she pumps her hips into Erik’s mouth again, seeming to ignore the sloppy, slick way he mouths at her, no finesse, no technique. If anything she’s enjoying his incompetence. Finally, she pulls out and drops his head; he’s only held up now by Azazel’s grip on his wrists.

Emma turns him over so that he’s on his back, then yanks at Azazel’s tail until he lets go. Erik, grateful in spite of himself, fists the furs as Emma shoves unceremoniously inside of him. His lips feel puffy and his throat feels raw and used, and he turns his face away from the stars, eyes focusing blurrily on the bonfires and the smear of faces around him. He feels himself drooling onto the furs, but it seems too much effort to lick his lips, to close his mouth. Emma ruts inside of him and he closes his eyes.

But when she shoves two fingers in alongside her cock, he screams and his eyes fly open.

A roar of approval from the crowd. Emma works her fingers in counterpoint to her cock, adds a third finger, and the stretch is too much, the stretch is unbearable. Maybe she doesn’t like how loose Erik is; maybe she prefers a tight cunt, and this is as close as she can get. Erik’s eyes roll back in his head when she pushes the fourth finger in.

He loses time again.

When he opens his eyes Emma is coming inside of him. She presses a kiss to his forehead and murmurs, “Blessed bearer, my loyalty is yours,” and then stands and steps aside for—oh no.

Creed grins over him. Erik whimpers in spite of himself, reduced to a mewling, cringing bitch by the mead and the fucking, and tries to pull himself away. But his movements are slow, uncoordinated, and Creed merely grasps both ankles and spreads them apart as wide as they can go, causing Erik to scream at the strain on his hamstrings. One ankle he pins next to Erik’s head, bending him fully in half. The other leg he wraps around his own waist, leaving his hand free to plunge into Erik’s cunt, four fingers at once, and Erik screams again. Creed’s fingers alone are about as wide as Emma’s cock and fingers, and Erik twists and writhes, trying to dislodge them. He imagines Creed’s claws extending, slowly, and piercing him open in a different sense.

“Please,” he begs, “please—”

The crowd screams its approval. They probably think he’s pleading for Creed to fuck him.

Creed pets his hair condescendingly. “Blessed bearer,” he says, making the words a sneer, “I honor you.” 

Then Creed lines up his cock with Erik’s hole and begins to press inside, and Erik can’t even summon enough breath to scream.

Creed is big, the shaft of his cock as wide around as another alpha’s knot. Erik bucks fruitlessly, strains, bears down, but Creed presses forward inexorably, and seems to enjoy Erik’s attempts at keeping him out besides. Erik makes the mistake of glancing down, away from Creed’s cold, preternaturally pale eyes, and sees that Creed is only halfway inside of him. Erik is already fuller than he’s ever been; he can barely imagine taking another inch, let alone the rest of Creed’s length. “Please,” his mouth shapes the word, but no noise comes out. Time slows. All that exists is the pain in his ass and the feeling of his insides being invaded, violated.

“Shh, little bitch,” Creed murmurs, quietly enough that no one else can hear. Erik whimpers. “Keep fighting and I might forget that Sebastian told me to be careful with you.”

Gods and goddess, Erik can’t imagine anything worse than what’s already happening to him. He forces himself to still, to go limp as Creed crams the last few inches of himself into Erik’s body. He feels dead; he feels like a corpse. At least Creed can’t knot him, he thinks dizzily. He doesn’t think he would survive that. Then Creed pulls out and pushes back inside, and Erik is subjected to the whole awful process of being pierced open by that cock again. And again. He wants to be somewhere else, he wants time to melt and pool around him the way it had when he was being fucked by Janos or Emma, but the pain is too great, every time Creed pulls out the feeling of _gaping_ makes him cringe with disgust and every time Creed pushes back in the pain brings him back to his body.

He is panting, barely able to catch his breath, which feels punched out of him with every thrust, and soft, for the first time all night. Creed grunts and moans and shudders above him, so big that Erik can barely catch the stars behind him, and when he spills his hot seed in Erik’s ass it burns and stings as it trickles into the places where he’s torn slightly. Creed grinds his knot into Erik’s pucker, and Erik’s mouth opens in a wordless scream as he thinks for a moment that Creed will knot him anyway—but then, laughing, he pulls back and leaves Erik fucked-out and exhausted on the furs.

It’s not over yet.

A cool breeze over his body. It’s full dark now. His hole flutters weakly against the air; he’s so stretched-open that he can feel the breeze _inside_ of him. The crowd is chanting now, but their shouts of “Blessed bearer!” all blend into each other until the individual words are incomprehensible. Footsteps. Erik tilts his head and his eyes catch on Shaw, who is standing over him in triumph, who watches him, near-insensible and exhausted, with deep satisfaction.

“Get up,” he says silkily.

It takes Erik a long moment before he can get to his hands and knees. He knows the gape of his hole is visible to the crowd around him, and he flushes with embarrassment all the way down his chest. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. His marriage and mating was meant to be full of light and family, not shame and humiliation. He takes a deep breath once he’s kneeling, and then summons the strength to force himself to his feet. His knees are unsteady and he sways, but Janos and Creed catch him, and drag him upright until he’s facing Shaw, who is bare and hard, and watching him with a kind of gleaming greed. Erik licks his lips, then tilts his chin up to face Shaw, to glare him down, to tell him that he is still unbroken.

Shaw’s grin widens and he beckons Erik closer. Creed pushes him and almost unbalances him again, but Erik goes. Shaw draws him close and kisses him, if you can call it that—it’s more like he fucks his mouth with his tongue, and Erik stands there passively and lets it happen, grateful in spite of himself for the recovery time for what Creed did to him. Shaw’s fingers play with Erik’s loose hole; he slides three in with ease. Erik barely feels it. Shaw bites his lips red and stinging, then pushes him to the ground and follows him down. The generals flank him, standing in a protective semicircle around the furs and blankets and pillows.

Erik mutely goes to straddle Shaw’s lap when he beckons. He’s half-hard again, the friction and heat of Shaw against his body having reminded his body that he’s in heat. He faces Shaw, who guides his hips down onto his swollen, leaking prick. He is so sore and so tired and so fucked-out, but Shaw makes him _feel_ it, even before the knot. Shaw slots his hands under his knees and spreads them far apart, so that everyone can see his cock plunging in and out of Erik’s sore, soft cunt, so that he is on display for them. Erik, exhausted, hating himself, rests his head against Shaw’s shoulder. Shaw laughs softly in his ear.

“Look at me, my treasure,” he says. Erik doesn’t move.

Shaw tightens his grip on Erik’s knee, to the point where he threatens to shatter it. Erik whimpers and draws back enough to look at Shaw, to take in the unholy light of triumph in his eyes, to hear his soft grunts as he fucks into Erik, as he bounces Erik in his lap. He wants to hide his face, he wants to crawl into his bed and never come out, but from now on even that bed he shares with Shaw, and Shaw is reminding him of it as he makes Erik look at him. Shaw won’t let him forget what’s happening, that his family’s killer is inside of him now, seeking his pleasure in his body, won’t let him escape.

The knot swells at the base of his cock.

Shaw thrusts up and up until Erik is wailing, but his hole is stretching slowly, slowly around the knot, and finally with a wet slick sound Shaw is inside of him, and Erik can feel his cock pulsing away. The knot stimulates parts of his body he’s never known before, pushes against his walls in all the right ways, and in spite of himself a little come dribbles from his hard cock, his second orgasm of the night. A respectable showing, if not a record-breaker, he thinks dizzily to himself. Shaw fits his hands under Erik’s ass and stands, and Erik cries out as he’s lifted through the air, his legs clinging instinctively to Shaw’s waist.

“Blessed bearer,” Shaw says, sweat sticking to his forehead and his light eyes glittering with malice, “my life is bound to yours.”

And then he carries him into his tent, to the celebrating cries and howls of the crowd behind him, and at last, at last, Erik can let tears slip from his eyes. Shaw lies over him, the knot locking them together, in the chieftain’s bed that was once his father’s and mother’s and which he now shares with a monster, and Erik can feel his insides swell and ache with Shaw’s seed and knows that there’s likely already babes growing in his belly. His children, which he had dreamed of at his mother’s knee, now the consequence of his mating with a murderer. Still. He swears to protect them. Even as the knot goes down and Shaw starts to fuck him again, steadily, even as Erik drifts in and out of consciousness that night, the only constant Shaw’s cock in his ass and his heavy breathing above him, he swears this. His children will not suffer the same fate his family had. He will keep them safe from Shaw’s mercurial madness, from his talent for sadism. He will keep them, and maybe one day he will forget what he lost to get them.

Shaw, of course, makes this promise impossible to keep.


	2. I: growing slight on tomorrow's meat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: non-graphic birth scene, infanticide.
> 
> Title from Natasha Oladokun's "Black Credit."

The upside of being pregnant is that Shaw no longer makes him beg for food, which, in essence, means that Shaw stops starving him.

Erik swiftly puts back on the weight he lost as Shaw’s prisoner. Other than that, not much is different until he starts to show. Shaw, who likes to watch Erik be put in his place, lets Creed fuck him when he’s mouthy or insubordinate, and so Erik learns quickly not to antagonize Shaw, to call him “husband” and “alpha,” to keep his head down when he’s around others and only fight as much as it amuses Shaw in private. He has scars, puncture marks above his hips, one jagged claw-mark down his cheek, from his lessons with Creed, who was careful enough during the ceremony when everyone was watching, but not otherwise. Creed still isn’t allowed to knot him, thank the gods and goddess. He remembers giggling with Angel at the baths, wondering what kind of masochist would let Creed put his entire cock in them. It turns out that it's Erik, and Creed can only convince someone to let him pry them open when they don't have a choice in it at all.

But as he grows, as his stomach rounds and expands, even his punishments with Creed grow less frequent. The generals leave him alone, more often than not, and Erik is… if not happy, at least happier than he has been since the coup. He thinks often about his mother, missing her with a fierce ache. He dreams of her sometimes, a recurring dream of her tucking blankets around his stomach and giving him advice that he remembers her giving to a friend of hers when Erik was very small, like advising ginger tea for the nausea, like telling him to eat several small meals during the day to keep up the babies’ strength.

He thinks often, too, about his siblings, how he’d expected Leon’s courtship of one of their warriors to go somewhere so he would have a brother-in-law to ask about pregnancy before he experienced it himself, how Ruth told him funny stories about their mother being pregnant with Erik’s litter, about how Marta had wanted children almost as badly as Erik had. And oh, he’d wanted children. He’d grown up at his mother’s knee, wanting little omegas of his own—and alphas and betas, too, but it had been his mother he’d been closest to, and his mother who told him the joy of raising omegas, the joy of watching someone like you flourish.

Shaw only lets him ride from encampment to encampment, so most of the time Erik spends in their tent, rubbing his stomach, singing little songs to his belly and talking to the little lives inside of him. One evening Shaw catches him; Erik doesn’t hear the flap lift, doesn’t sense the breeze from outside, until he’s halfway through a verse of a lullaby that his mother used to sing to him. When he does notice, he looks up, startled, to find Shaw smiling at him, an indulgent, unpleasant smile. Shaw crowds close to him and kisses him, rubbing his hard cock against Erik’s swelling belly. “You’ll be a wonderful parent, my treasure,” Shaw coos, and Erik shudders, not sure why that feels like a threat, not certain why the words, almost kind, send shivers down his spine. Shaw fucks and knots him twice that night, and that, at least, is understandable, that, at least, is comprehensible. 

He asks Angel, his personal servant and friend for years, how many she thinks he’s having; Angel is a beta, but has six older omega siblings, so has been through this quite often. She hums. “How many do you want?” she asks.

“I…” Erik hesitates. “I haven’t…”

“Everyone has an ideal number for their first litter,” Angel reassures him. “All my sisters and brothers did.” She spans her hands across his now-bulging belly, massaging rose oil into his skin.

“Four,” Erik admits shyly. “My mother’s first litter was four.”

“Hmm,” Angel smiles at him. “You’re a little small for four. And you only came twice during the ceremony.” It’s received folk wisdom that the more often you come during heat, the more children are conceived as a result of it. “Two or three, maybe.” She dries her hands and sets to combing out his hair. Erik sighs and leans back into her touch and nods. Three would be respectable. He imagines it, three little lives, clinging to him, clinging to each other. He wonders what their gifts will be. 

That night, it is late when Shaw returns to their tent, and Erik is asleep until the moment Shaw withdraws the plug that Erik is required to wear whenever Shaw feels like it and just slides inside, Erik still slick and wet and sticky from an earlier round. Erik obediently follows Shaw’s tugs to put him on his hands and knees. His belly scrapes the furs. He drowsily focuses on the kicks of the babies inside of him to distract himself, counting. There’s one bulge in the upper right of the bump that always seems particularly active, like they never sleep. Erik falls asleep to kicking and movement there at night and wakes up to kicking and movement there in the morning. He knows that babies sometimes shift position in the womb, but he rather thinks that this is a single particularly restless little one, and he vows to teach them how to ride and how to run, the way his father taught him. 

Shaw’s strokes inside of him leave him hot and flushed, but Shaw doesn’t reach for his cock; Erik resigns himself to falling asleep frustrated again. When he comes, Shaw clenches a hand in his hair and grinds Erik’s head down into the furs until he gasps for air, but that’s the worst thing he’s done to Erik all day, so Erik thinks now is the time to ask. When Shaw draws him back onto his side, still tied together on his knot, Erik tilts his chin over his shoulder and says, softly, demurely, “Alpha?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I have some scraps to make up toys for the children? Nothing expensive, just some old cloth and straw?”

Shaw leans forward, presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Of course you can,” he purrs, silky-sweet. “I’ll get you some silk from the raids on Carnelia, some cotton batting from the Westchesterian traders. After all,” he sweeps a possessive hand over Erik’s belly; Erik shudders but presses closer, and Shaw seems to like that, if the way he licks at Erik’s cheek is any indication, “I want only the best for my beloved heirs.”

Erik smiles a relieved smile. Shaw is… repellent, but perhaps if enough time passes, Erik can forget what he did to gain his throne. Perhaps they will have the children in common, if nothing else, perhaps they can build… a family of sorts. Erik will never forgive him, but perhaps he can live beside him. And the sex… Erik will learn to endure it. If he’s good, Shaw will stop giving him to Creed. If he’s good, his children may never have to ask why Erik returns limping and bloody from a general’s tent whenever he has displeased their father. It’s only Shaw. What is his unhappiness in comparison to the lives growing within him, luminous and whole?

Erik pricks his finger sewing soft rag dolls for his children—four of them, he can’t help but manifest his hopes this way—and so adds his blood to the love with which he crafts their toys. He keeps them out of the way, in the chest at the bottom of the bed, and sews late at night when Shaw has already had him once or twice and is asleep at his side. Erik sometimes thinks about sending the needle through Shaw’s artery, but he knows that Shaw’s gift will protect him. He hasn’t tried to kill him in months. The last time he had, sneaking poison into Shaw’s food… he doesn’t like to remember how Shaw had him punished. 

The babies come in midwinter.

He’s helping Angel with the washing when the labor pains come. He’s been having the false pains for a few days now, but when agony slices through him he knows at once that this is the real thing. He gasps and curls over the washing-board. Angel understands at once; she runs to get Shaw, who appears at once, his generals by his side. Shaw gestures, and Creed scoops him up and carries him to a small wagon that takes him to the medical tent, which has been set up strangely far from the rest of the encampment. Erik curls on his side amid the warm hay and soft blankets lining the back of the cart and breathes through the pain, which racks him more and more quickly now. Labor passes quickly for omegas, and by the time they arrive at Essex’s tent and Shaw and Azazel help him down from the cart, the pains are coming every eight minutes.

Essex orders him to walk, and so Erik does, even though tears stream down his face, even though all he wants to do is lie down and curl up and have the babies be cut out of him. They are far away from the encampment now, but if he strains his ears he fancies he can hear the song being struck up in his honor. Loved ones sing when someone is in labor; when it’s the mate of the chieftain, the whole tribe sings. Maybe it’s just his imagination, but he clings to the remembered rhythms as he walks, alone, with only Shaw’s greedy eyes and the cool, mostly disinterested stares of the generals tracking him.

At last, he is about to pop, and Essex gestures for him to lie back and hitch his knees up. He doesn’t remember much of what happens next. Screaming. Someone placing a cool cloth on his forehead. One reprieve after the first baby is out, then another after the second. Finally, Essex grunts and says, “That’s all.”

Erik opens his eyes, feeling unsteady. He can hear the wailing of his babies. He reaches out his hands for them, but Shaw is there instead, looking at him with something almost like fondness. “Not yet, my treasure,” Shaw says.

The babies are swaddled on the ground next to him, and Erik watches with confusion and alarm as Creed steeps close and sniffs at each of them. He nods at the little silver-haired omega boy and the omega girl, shakes his head over the beta boy with the tail. Shaw sighs, looking pleased. “Well done,” he says to Erik. “Two strong omegas.” Erik frowns in confusion—there are three of them—but Shaw jerks his head at the third babe and says to Creed, “Kill it.”

Erik screams.

He reaches for the boy, but Azazel and Emma each grab one of his shoulders and force him back. “Why?!” he cries out, writhing under their touch, reaching out desperately for any metal in the area—but there is none—panic racks him as he realizes that Shaw _planned_ for this, that he deliberately isolated Erik—”why, why, please, that’s your baby—”

“Not mine,” Shaw says coolly. “I admit, I quite enjoyed seeing you used by my generals… and it was tradition and a way to establish that my rule is legitimate. But I’m not raising anyone else’s brats. So the ones that are mine, we will keep… and the rest will be done away with.”

“No!” Erik screams. “No, no, they’re yours, they’re all yours—I haven’t lain with anyone but you since the ceremony except at your command— _please_ —”

Shaw laughs. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? That one has a _tail._ ”

The noise is making the babies squall. Erik fights like a wildcat, ignores Essex’s bland warnings that he will do himself a grave injury—he manages to throw off Azazel, but Emma, diamond-form, holds him back as Creed carries the babe outside, and then Azazel’s tail wraps around his wrists again, just like on the night when his babies were conceived. Shaw is stronger than him, Shaw is _so_ much stronger than him, but he doesn’t even bother to join the fray, instead leaving it to his generals to keep Erik contained.

Erik fights, and fights, and screams, and screams, and _pleads_ , offering his body, his life, offering anything, and Shaw—ignores him—like he’s nothing, less than a speck of dirt on his shoes—Erik screams and doesn’t stop screaming even after he hears the wailing from the babe outside cut off.

Huge, terrible sobs shake his body. This isn’t right. This isn’t _right._ The ceremony is supposed to mean that his children are _safe_ , not get them killed—they are all Shaw’s children because they are Erik’s children, that’s the way it’s supposed to be—descent is passed down from the dam, not the sire. A hole in his heart has opened up, one-third of it a gaping black chasm in his chest, and he realizes that he is limp and unmoving in Emma’s arms and _hates_ himself, hates that he wasn’t strong enough to save his boy.

He only stirs when Shaw moves toward the remaining children, picks up the sobbing girl—he moans weakly and reaches for her, trying to summon her the way he summons metal to himself—half his remaining heart is in her, surely she will fly to his arms—but Shaw only rocks her gently, soothing his long fingers across her damp dark hair. “Relax, Erik,” he says casually. “These are safe… so long as you behave. I don’t actually need omega heirs, after all.” Erik has no words. Erik is only mute, melting tears and despair. “I think I’ll name you after the goddess Wenda, little one. Wanda. What a pretty name. The boy will be Pietro, for he will be the anchor of our people, the stone at our hearts.”

Essex puts him back together—he had torn himself open during the fight after all—and at last, at last, Erik is allowed to hold his babies. His remaining babies. He hunches over them, in spite of the pain, as though he can protect them from their father’s killing touch. Shaw lets him, though he takes Pietro away after a while, just to prove that he can, and though Erik pleads with him, Shaw simply runs a hand through Erik’s hair, yanks, and says, “Are you disobeying me?” and Erik remembers the threat against his children (his _remaining_ children) and shakes his head and watches Shaw adjust Pietro’s swaddling with terror.

He’d been so stupid. So naive to believe that he could ever make a life with Shaw. Shaw is a _monster_ , a killer of children—and not just the children they come across in their raids of the border villages, his _own_ children now—all Erik has left is bare survival, and the survival of Pietro and Wanda. Shaw makes more threats about what he will do if Erik ever tells anyone in the tribe what happened here—and Erik understands, dimly, that if others knew, there would be an uprising, not that it would do any good against Shaw, and then he would lose his babies, Shaw’s but omega, dear but expendable, for good—but Erik barely hears him. He is transfixed with Pietro’s restless kicking.

His little jumping bean.

Wanda yawns, her face crumpled from the wailing she’d done before. Erik is torn in two directions—the pure desolation of the loss of the third child, who didn’t even live long enough to have a name—and the fierce determination to protect his remaining children from any harm, especially their father. He is half-dead and half-alive as he’s never been before. He wishes he could live for vengeance. But there are more important things.

In the cart ride back to the encampment, Erik brings Pietro to his breast to suckle, and begins to plan.


	3. I: inch by inch conversion to new flesh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: corporal punishment of a spouse, elements of sexual coercion
> 
> Title from "By Inch-Meal a Disease," by Nabila Lovelace.

Erik has nothing. No one to go to, no place that is safe; if he so much as speaks out against Shaw, he will take his surviving children from him. Or worse. If he’s going to keep his children safe, he can only rely on himself, and for that to work, he has to be in good condition. So he gives himself a month to recover from the birth. A month of Shaw acting as though nothing happened in the birthing tent other than Erik giving birth to a litter of small but acceptable size. A month of Shaw inside him, over him, panting sickly into his ear, when every sinew of Erik’s body wants to lean away from him, to rip himself off Shaw’s knot and go somewhere, anywhere, other than the arms of the man who slew his child.

Erik adjusts to the demands of the babies. He learns the different tenors of their cries, when they’re hungry or dirty or just want someone to cuddle them, whether that be Erik or each other or the large floppy dolls he made for them. Wanda refuses to sleep without her doll; Pietro refuses to sleep without Wanda. Shaw, of course, sleeps through the midnight hours, not that Erik wants to draw his attention to the remaining children anyway; it is up to Erik to rise and coddle them, to feed and nourish them, and though he’d fallen deeply in love the moment he laid eyes on them, it is this, the hard work of caring for them, that acquaints them with their personalities, their quirks and habits. Every moment, he realizes anew that he has to get them out of here.

So during the day, when Shaw leaves him to his own devices, when his only job is caring for the children, he makes preparations.

Shaw continues to feed him well while he’s nursing. He saves food, nuts and dried berries, squirrels it away under the two dolls that will never be used. He steals clothes from the laundry and brings treats to the horses until they become familiar with him again. While Shaw fucks him, he practices in his mind the series of events that will need to happen. The mead. The horses. The decoy.

A month and a week after he gives birth, Shaw is asleep as he slides out of bed, wincing as Shaw’s cock slips from his hole. He slings the pack filled with food and cloth diapers and his mother’s necklace over his back, swaddles the dolls so it looks like the babies are sleeping. “Sorry,” he whispers, when Wanda whimpers as he pries hers gently out of her arms, “I’ll make you a new one, I promise.” He drugs the babies with a mixture of milk and mead, and when they’re sleeping soundly in his arms, he slinks out the tent flap and starts running for the pasture. He strips off there in the field, stuffs his clothes and the babies’ blankets in the saddlebags of their fastest horse, a courser, and sets him off on a decoy route to fool Creed’s nose.

In stolen clothing, he saddles his own horse—a beautiful gray palfrey—puts Wanda in the pack on his back, substantially lighter without their clothing, and tucks Pietro into his clothes in the front. Both the pack and the clothes are designed for riding with babies, so he has no fear that they’ll fall out; he could have also stolen a pair of specialized swaddled saddlebags, but he wants to feel them close, to feel their heat. Silently, he angles the horse north, towards the nearest border. Maybe he will find refuge in one of the Westchesterian villages. He has no illusions about the kind of welcome he can expect—since Shaw has taken power, raids on the Westchesterian villages have left them hostile and fearful. But even if they take his children away, at least they’ll be safe from Shaw.

The moment he gets out of the encampment, he rides hard and fast. It’s two days, perhaps two and a half, to the Westchesterian border. That’s a lot of time for Shaw and his men to catch up, but hopefully leaving in the dead of night will buy him some time, as will the false trail he laid. If he can just outlast them for two days. His poor horse will be almost dead by the time they make it to Westchester, and he will have to slow to feed the babies when they wake. Creed and the hunters, unencumbered, will move faster. But if his head start is great enough—if he can just make it across the border—

Creed catches up with him an hour before dawn.

Erik hears the pounding of hoofbeats behind him, and immediately kicks his horse into a run. But his horse is tired, and Creed’s is somehow fresh, and Creed, grinning, comes level with him and, claws extended, scores a long, shallow run into the horse’s belly. She screams and twists, and Erik cries out as he tries to hold on. He doesn’t fall, thank the gods and goddess, but the horse is no good to him anymore. He all but stumbles off of her, one hand clutching Pietro to his chest, the other sealed around the strap of the pack Wanda is in, and _runs_ for it, though he knows it’s futile, though he knows it’s over.

Creed laughs to see him run and dismounts slowly, leisurely. And then he’s bounding across the plain toward Erik, running with impossible speed, and he easily brings Erik down with a claw catching in the meat of his calf and dragging him back toward him.

“No!” Erik screams. He rolls as he falls so that, thank the gods and goddess, his shoulder takes the brunt of the impact instead of one of the babies. He tries to crawl away, but Creed has a hand on his ankle and drags him back until Erik is trapped between his arms, seemingly amused at Erik’s thrashing and shouting. “No, please don’t take me back,” Erik begs, appealing to his better nature—whatever better nature he has—“please, please, I’ll do anything—”

“Anything?” Creed leers. He thrusts his hips up against Erik’s ass suggestively.

“Yes,” Erik pants, “please, please—” He gets a hand on Creed’s clothed cock, soft but with a certain thickness to it that suggests that he’s interested, and squeezes. Creed nuzzles at his neck, and Erik stiffens—he knows those teeth can tear out a throat in a heartbeat—but forces himself to relax, lest Creed read his fear as disinterest.

“Tempting,” Creed purrs. “But Sebastian has already promised you to me if I bring you back unharmed. _Mostly_ unharmed.”

Erik screams again, in impotent rage and fury, and tries to claw at the arms bracketing him, but Creed simply bats his hands away and reaches into his belt pocket for a firecracker-flare. He snaps it in half, then throws it some distance away; the sky bursts with color, and in a sulfurous instant Azazel is there. Erik bucks at the red hands reaching for where Wanda and Pietro are bound to him. Azazel retreats for a moment.

“You don’t want them to watch this,” he tells Erik, almost gently, and Erik—goes limp. Doesn’t fight as Azazel cuts the leather straps binding Wanda and Pietro to his body, as he takes his children from him. He wonders if he will ever see them again. Azazel goes in a rush of smoke, and Creed drags Erik, dazed and unresisting, to his feet. Even if he could manage to get away now, what would be the point without his babies? He doesn’t fight as Creed binds his hands together and loops the rope over his saddle horn, as Creed re-mounts his horse, leaving Erik’s own palfrey injured and groaning behind them, and starts it at a brisk clip, leaving Erik to stumble behind him. Maybe Shaw won’t kill him. Maybe even if he does, he’ll take pity on Erik long enough to allow him to kiss his children goodbye.

Ha. As though Shaw has ever known pity once in his life.

Creed goes slowly enough that Erik can keep up, though not easily. As the sun pitches higher, sweat sizzles off his skin; it’s well past noon by the time they make it back to the encampment. He can hear the buzz of whispers, the way people look with pity and shock at the way he’s being dragged through the clusters of tents like a common criminal, like a petty thief, about to be lashed for his crimes. He wonders what Shaw will tell them about his death. Whether the last of his old, grand line of chieftains and warlords being wiped out will finally stir some of the warriors to action in a way the coup did not.

But he’s not the last of his line anymore, is he? He has the babies—

Creed lets the horse loose to pasture and drags him by the rope to Shaw’s tent. By now Erik is stumbling, dizzy and parched and bereft of his babies. Creed shoves him in through the tent flap, then forces Erik to his knees. Shaw is there, flanked by the rest of his generals.

In each arm he holds a baby. Erik stares at him, mutely, knowing that if Shaw decides to hurt them, to kill them, there is nothing he can do. He is weak, he is helpless. He can’t even save his children.

Wanda is fussing a little. Shaw shushes her. He rocks her for a bit until she quiets, then finally, finally turns to Erik. His eyes are cold—his eyes are flat. There is madness in them, a madness that Erik finds impenetrable; for the first time in a long time, he has no idea what Shaw will do to him.

“You tried to steal my children,” Shaw says, almost conversational.

“Please,” Erik whispers. “Don’t hurt them.”

“You ask _me_ for a boon? After you tried to _take_ my _children?”_ Shaw’s voice raises to a roar. Erik doesn’t flinch back. He has no fear for himself, not anymore. At the noise, Wanda whimpers and Pietro starts crying. Shaw doesn’t seem to notice; he hands the children off to Azazel, whose hands are already outstretched to take them, and strides forward. Erik breathes. He knows he can order Azazel to kill the children as easily as he could do it himself, but somehow they feel safer, out of Shaw’s hands.

Shaw kicks him hard in the stomach until he doubles over, then places his foot on Erik’s cheek and grinds his face into the dirt. “Beg. Beg for my mercy.”

“Please,” Erik whispers, tasting the dust and grit of the tent floor. “Please, mercy, husband, please. Please don’t hurt the children.”

“And you?” Shaw sneers. “No wretched pleading on your own behalf?”

“No,” Erik says. “Please, just don’t hurt them.”

Shaw lifts his foot off of Erik’s face and Creed jerks him upright again. Shaw seizes his jaw in an iron grip and forces Erik to look at him, not at his babies in Azazel’s arms. “Oh, my treasure,” he says, sounding suddenly, unaccountably kind. His eyes are unreadable still. “I understand that you were only trying to do what you thought with your tiny birth-addled mind what was best for the children. So I will take pity on you. I won’t hurt them… this time.”

“Thank you,” Erik sobs, “thank you, alpha, thank you—”

“Take him outside,” Shaw says, and Creed and Emma each seize an arm and drag him out to the center of the encampment, where the whipping post has been set up. The rope binding Erik’s hands together is threaded through a hole in the center of the post, to hold him upright when his legs fail him. Already he can hear the crowd gathering, the murmurs of their shock and dismay. This will destroy whatever authority he has left as his father’s son. This might even kill him; rapists and murderers have died at the post before. But Wanda and Pietro are safe, still in the tent, under Azazel’s care. They won’t watch this, and they won’t suffer. And that means Erik can endure anything. Shaw will hurt him, and Erik will be grateful for it.

“For attempting to defect to Westchester,” Shaw pronounces, and he can hear the rustle of whispers rising up as the crowd processes Erik’s betrayal, “I sentence Erik Shaw to fifty lashes with the whip. As his mate, I take responsibility for his actions and will deliver his punishment myself.” Erik watches, as if from a distance, as Janos brings Shaw the braided leather whip used for punishments. Fifty’s not that bad. It won’t kill him, probably. It will only make him wish he were dead.

Shaw walks behind him, swinging the whip through the air. Erik cringes at the sound of each snap, though he knows that tensing is the worst thing he can do; he can’t help it, it’s an involuntary reflex, more ingrained in his body than anything save the desire to nurse his children. He could be lying over them to protect them from the whip and still tense at the sound.

The first blow strikes him right between the shoulderblades.

He doesn’t scream. It’s as though all the air has been punched out of him. A white line of cold fire snakes it way down his back, and he has a moment to think _That wasn’t so bad_ before the stinging starts up and, almost at the same moment, the second strike licks along the edges of the first, tearing his skin open, rending him red and vulnerable to the elements. He screams this time. Blood, feeling sizzling hot, drips down his back.

The pain doesn’t end when the whip draws back. Soon enough, his back turns into a bloody, meaty mess, the brisk _whoosh_ of the whip wet-sounding and heavy. After the sixth lash, he—whites out for a little while. Loses count. He had wanted to be strong, to be silent, but when he comes back to himself he realizes the distant, hoarse, wracking screams he can hear are coming from his own throat, and his face is wet with tears, which is almost a relief because he hasn’t had anything to drink in hours, because the hot sun is staring down at him and he feels like he’s baking alive on top of being beaten raw and open, he feels parched, every inch of him feels brittle-tender, except for the parts that have come alive and wretched with pain. 

At some point, he actually passes out. Someone splashes water on his face to rouse him. It takes a moment; he comes back to himself, but it takes his eyelashes longer to flicker open. The water has disguised his tears. He looks up hazily into Emma’s face. “You with us, sugar?” she asks unsympathetically.

Erik blinks dumbly at her. She nods to Shaw. And another lash tears through the air. Reality dims again.

Someone is working at the ties at his wrists. He collapses on his face onto the dirty, dusty ground. A low growl of laughter.

Someone is picking him up. He screams, then passes out again.

He is lying on his stomach. Light fades in with colors, suggesting that he is in a tent, not on the hard, unforgiving, dry ground. Someone places a cool cloth on his forehead. Erik wets his lips to thank them, but suddenly pain splashes through his wounds and he screams and passes out again.

He can hear the low rumble of Essex’s voice—”permanent damage”—and with every bit of strength in him he summons metal to him and _hurls_ it at Essex, uncoordinated and messy, no one is taking his babies from him again, they’re not, they’re _not,_ “Stay away from my babies—” he’s screaming, slurred, unintelligible even to himself, and then darkness falls over him again.

Wanda is crying. He recognizes that cry. She’s hungry. Please, where are his children? He needs to nurse them. It hurts so much—

He opens his eyes. A slice of light comes through the partly-open tent flap to lie on the ground beside him. He’s back in his own bed, a blanket thrown over his leg, and when he moves pain burns through him but he can also feel the compression of bandages around his ribs and shoulders and hips and buttocks. “Don’t move,” says a low, familiar voice beside him. Angel. She tips a pitcher of water at his lips and he drinks from it greedily. “Not too fast,” she says. There’s something rough and uncertain about her voice. Erik tips his head to look at her and sees that she’s been crying. He tries to ask her what’s wrong but pain knifes through him and he whites out again. When he comes back to himself, the light slicing across the floor is at a different angle, and Angel’s on his other side.

“How long was I—”

“Two days,” Angel says.

“My babies?” Erik whispers.

“They’re right here,” Angel reassures him. Erik cranes his head—pain, gods and goddess, so much pain—but when he catches a glimpse of two bundles of swaddling clothes he relaxes.

“They’re okay?” he rattles out.

“They’re just fine, Erik,” Angel murmurs. She runs a hand through his hair. It feels good. Erik falls into the sensation a bit. “You’ll be all right, too, in time.” She pointedly doesn’t ask him what he’d been thinking, if it was true that he’d been trying to defect. He loves her for that. “I need to change your dressings, all right? Can you sit up?”

With shaking arms, Erik pushes himself upright. The pain flashes across his vision in colors so bright he doesn’t have names for them, but then he is sitting up and Angel is offering him the pitcher of water again. He takes it with unsteady hands and drinks deeply. Her touch gentle, Angel unwinds the bandages and replaces them with fresh ones. Erik watches dully as the gauze, stained brown and clotted from his blood, unspools into a little pile beside them. “Shouldn’t Essex do this?” he realizes after too long.

Angel chuckles. It’s a strained sound. “In your delirium, you threw a bowl filled with… blood and other unsavory elements… at Essex’s head. He has refused to treat you. But the Chieftain doesn’t want you dead.” _Yet_ , is the word which lies unspoken between them. Erik looks away, and allows himself to fully register that he has failed. He had one chance— _one_ chance—and he did the very best he could—and it still wasn’t enough. Next time, it will be his children that will suffer, Shaw was very clear on that. He can never risk it again. Never.

Angel changes the bandages on his back and then another one on his calf where Creed’s claw had cut straight through the muscle. “Rest,” she urges him, but just as he moves to lie back down, Wanda starts crying.

“Oh,” Erik murmurs. “She’s hungry—please—can you—?”

Angel hesitates. “The Chieftain’s been getting a beta woman who just had a child to nurse them while you were…” she runs out of words, and Erik feels a dizzying wave of relief that his children haven’t been starving while he was being punished for his stupidity. “I can summon her—”

“No,” Erik says. “I’m right here—please, just bring her to me—”

Pietro starts crying as well. Angel hesitates, but goes over and sweeps one child into each arm, and brings them back to Erik. Erik’s arms are too weak to hold them, so he has Angel tuck each one against his chest, and he watches fondly as they latch. “You need to rest, Erik,” Angel says insistently. “You’re in terrible pain—”

Erik knows she’s right, but—they’re only babies, they don’t know he’s hurting and they’re crying out for him. He doesn’t have the stamina to sit up for long, but long enough to placate Wanda and comfort Pietro with the beating of his heart. Erik fairly collapses on his side, but at his request Angel places Wanda and Pietro close enough for him to touch, if he had the strength to raise his hand. Satisfied that if they fuss he will hear them, he lets himself close his eyes. The drug-like sleep of pain bears him aloft and away.

He insists on caring for his children even when he’s healing. Shaw leaves him alone to recover; apparently he’s not fun when he can’t fight back. Erik has days of terrible pain, when the healing muscles in his back cramp and all he can do is scream silently into the blankets, and Angel’s hands flutter over his back and the bandages, unsure what to do. And he has days that the pain is almost muted, and he can hold his children, and sit up and suckle them, and even hold the dolls that Shaw hadn’t thrown out in front of their faces and watch them grab for them. On one of the bad days, Angel smuggles him valerian tea.

“Angel—” he protests, though his back is spasming and he wants it more than anything—“how?—the Chieftain would never let you—”

“It’s from General Frost,” Angel tells him. “She says your pain is giving her a headache.” 

So he drinks deeply and falls into a thick sleep, roused only by the movements of his children beside him. Shaw lets him recover, mostly, before he returns to their marriage bed from… whoever’s bed he had been sharing and demands Erik resume his marital duties. Erik endures.


	4. I: making folk-songs from soul-sounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: infanticide, brief mention of physical child abuse, ongoing domestic abuse and sexual coercion
> 
> Title from "Georgia Dusk" by Jean Toomer.

Genoshans have a saying: Children grow with the clock. 

It’s true, Erik realizes as one year with the children ripens into two and then three. Pietro is always a little ahead of Wanda; he got his first tooth first, said his first word first, took his first steps first—Wanda watches him and lets him make the mistakes, and then with impeccable grace copies him and makes it seem like she could effortlessly talk or walk or laugh all along. Pietro is somewhat of a quieter baby than Wanda, who cries at the slightest provocation, but the moment they can speak that ends. Pietro is fleet in thought and action, always wondering about everything, always dreaming of what he will do when he is bigger. Wanda is quieter, though her tantrums are still legendary, eyes big and watchful, content to play with herself when her brother is busy pestering Erik. He loves them both with fierce, wordless, world-hungering devotion. 

Pietro and Wanda’s gifts are manifest at an early age. From the time Pietro starts moving, he is fast; Erik blinks and he is across the tent. He gets only faster when he learns to walk, and run; Erik doesn’t time him, but he thinks that by the time Pietro is grown, he will have the same ability as a great hero of legend, Ester, whose speed was not just in her legs but in her whole body. Wanda creates red bursts of light from her hands, and… strange things happen in the shadows of those lights. He doesn’t fully understand her abilities, but she has: turned a butterfly back into a caterpillar, briefly animated Pietro’s doll, and caused shadow shapes made by Erik’s hands to fly off the tent wall and flutter around them.

Erik feels like they mature together, as, he thinks, all young parents must. Erik had been twenty when the children had been born, and the wonder of seeing two pink-faced squishy bundles bloom and blossom into actual children is what keeps him sane, most days. He is no longer allowed to ride into battle—still a prisoner in Shaw’s arms, in every way but the legal sense—so he finds other things to do. He helps Angel and the other servants with the tasks of running the encampment. He becomes handier with a needle, and sews clothes for the children, stitches together their dolls when they rip them apart. At Wanda’s sly request, he sews Wanda’s doll to look like Pietro, complete with silver hair and his own soft sandals, and Pietro’s to look like Wanda.

And people start bringing him broken and dented weaponry, and he smooths out the nicks and bends with his gift. Shaw demands that Erik keep his husband’s weapons in pristine, glinting condition with his gift, but it soothes and settles him to be able to help other with his abilities. He’d kept his own gear in good condition when his family had been alive, of course, but he’d never thought that maybe he’d make a good weaponsmaster. They have one, but her eyesight is going, and she seems grateful for Erik’s help.

Sometimes Erik is even allowed to spend a few weeks on a single piece for Shaw or his generals, layering steel over steel until an incredibly strong, incredibly thin metal is formed, pieces powerful enough to fetch a fortune on the market or elaborate enough to separate a King’s head from his body. At one point, Emma orders him to make a set of knives in the layered-steel fashion, and only after spending every spare moment poring over them does he realize it was at the anniversary of the coup, which he has never been allowed to mourn, and he is grateful for that, too. He doesn’t thank Emma, but she gets her pretty new knives, so he thinks it’s a fair trade.

It will never amount to anything—Shaw will never let him have a life independent of him—he has been very clear on that. But it makes their raiders more fearsome, it means their warriors come back more often, and Shaw can hardly argue against that. And Pietro likes watching him work. He can sit for hours, mesmerized, as Erik stretches metal so thinly it’s almost transparent, and seals layer after layer into a rippling rainbow of strength.

Other things are—hard. 

The children are too young to really wonder why their Papa sometimes leaves and returns smelling of hurt after he’s served Creed. It’s just an element of their routine for them. But they are old enough to cry when Shaw strikes Erik for being insubordinate or disobedient, and so Erik grows quiet and servile and sweet, except in bed, where he still can’t battle back his revulsion sometimes. It is hard to talk to his children and try to sound adoring about their father, to make their fractured family seem as full of love and light as his own whole, happy, joy-brimming childhood was. It is hard to make sure the children see Shaw as “Father,” and know to always obey him, lest they risk his temper, backed by his gods-gifted strength.

Most of the time, thank the gods and goddess, Shaw looks upon their tantrums and mistakes with distant amusement, at worst picking them up and placing them outside the tent until they cool down. Sometimes he plays with them, and laughs at Erik afterward for watching them nervously, his hands shaking until Shaw steps away. Shaw has only punished a child once, a backhand delivered to Wanda’s face when she cried and tried to pull Erik away from Shaw when he was demanding that Erik serve him, and Erik knows it was more of a punishment for himself than his daughter, for the look of disgust on his face that Wanda must have picked up on. Shaw hit her with normal strength, but it still bruised, and Erik has been careful to be cheerful and deferential to Shaw whenever he makes demands of him if his children are about ever since.

He weans the babies, and it gets harder.

Omegas can get pregnant outside of heat; rare, you have to be biologically _very_ compatible, but Erik fears that this is just another way in which fate has decided to punish him, and so he is stiff and terrified whenever someone who isn’t Shaw slides into him and uses him. He begs Angel to smuggle him contraceptives, and, bless her, she tries; but Emma catches her, in spite of her best attempts not to think about what is in the load of laundry she’s bringing to Shaw’s tent, and has her beaten for it, and though Erik knows what is in store for his children if they aren’t what Shaw defines as _his_ next time, he can’t bear to ask her to do it again. But as the months pass, as his body adjusts to no longer nursing and gears up for his next heat, it becomes clear that he isn’t pregnant, and his worries shift instead to the next heat.

“Please,” he begs one night, as the preparations for the ceremony for his next heat take place, as he contemplates with horror the idea of another night that ends with him gaping and full with rotten seed, “please, can’t I only lay with you when my heat comes? Then the babies will definitely be yours?” It feels bitter and awful to take up Shaw’s twisted definition, when Erik _knows_ that all the babies he bears are Shaw’s by rights. And bitterer and awfuller when Shaw laughs and kisses his forehead.

“My treasure,” he says, “I’d never dishonor you like that.”

He pleads and he grovels but Shaw is implacable, determined that Erik will be mounted by all four of his generals, as per tradition (though _real_ traditionhas it that the omega chooses which of the generals he lets mate him), during his next heat. Erik’s nightmares of the birth of his babies grows more frequent, and this time Wanda and Pietro join their nameless brother in Creed’s arms as he carries them out of the tent to never return to his arms.

Erik has nothing; Erik has no recourse, no way forward but one. He will be bred, and the chances that at least one of them will be “illegitimate” are good, and his child or children will die, and he will… continue to exist, if that is the proper word for the grayness that threatens at his vision when he thinks of carrying on after another birth like the last one. Certainly the semblance of a life he has, that he has clawed out for himself out of despair and devastation, will collapse in on itself at another strain. And what will become of Wanda and Pietro then? During the day, he tunnels his vision, shifts the bleakness and hopelessness aside to concentrate on his darlings. If they squirm at the extra attention, they don’t shy away from it. It is only during the night when the despair overwhelms him, as he grows wetter when he’s fucked in preparation for his heat, as the days tick closer to the next moment when the next litter will be conceived.

Erik has nothing. Except the fight.

So after the feast, after the children, joyful and full, have been sent to bed, when Shaw shoves his trousers down and beckons at Azazel, Erik waits just long enough for Shaw to step away before he slams the back of his head into Azazel’s nose. Azazel reels backwards, cursing, and Erik faces him down, fists clenched; he tries to throw his fist into his face but before he can Janos is picking him up and dragging him backwards, and Erik shouts and tries to twist out of his grip, but Azazel is there and his tail is wrapped around Erik’s neck and Erik chokes and blacks out for a moment and when he comes back to himself Azazel is moving inside of him and Janos has his fingers stuffed alongside Azazel’s cock.

Erik cries out and writhes furiously, his hands yanking at Azazel’s tail still around his throat, and he can hear the murmurs of the crowd as he fights and struggles, as he shoves against Janos’s torso when he sticks his cock inside alongside Azazel’s. He can hear the horror of the onlookers, feel the weight of their scandalized gazes; this ceremony is meant to honor the mate of the chieftain, not be a pornographic window into his daily rape and debasement, and Erik played along last time but this time he will _not._ His struggles disguise the way he seeks leverage for his knees, and how, when he feels Azazel start to speed up, he lifts himself off of their cocks and lets Azazel’s seed splatter wetly on his hole.

Azazel laughs, astonished, then shoves him to the ground so Janos can take his turn. Erik screams in fury as Azazel kneels on his back and shoulders, as Janos thrusts viciously inside of him, at the way he can’t wriggle away and let Janos’s come spill uselessly on the dirt. Instead, Janos buries himself to the hilt, pulsing inside of him, and Erik can’t help but sob his frustrated hatred and disgust. When Janos pulls out, a wet line of come drools from the tip of his cock to the mess trickling out from between Erik’s thighs. Azazel releases him, and Erik scrambles backward, almost backing into the crowd; they bow outward to avoid him, and he has complicated feelings about that, but it doesn’t matter.

Creed drags him back to the furs and blankets that have been set out, and Erik redoubles his struggles, pounding his fists futilely on Creed’s back, shoving his face away when Creed sniffs at his wet and sloppy mess of a hole, his tongue licking out like he can taste Janos’s spend on the air. It’s when he reaches for a dagger that someone in the crowd has hanging from their hip though, summons it to him and slashes shallowly at Creed’s stomach—it heals over in an instant—that Shaw stands, even as the murmuring of the crowd goes to a fever pitch.

Creed’s grip on his wrist increases until he drops the dagger, and before he can bring it back to him with his mind, Shaw catches him from behind and murmurs, “Settle down or I’ll bring the children back out.” And that’s the end of Erik’s fight.

Shaw keeps hold of him sternly as Erik goes limp and lets Creed spread his legs. No more fighting, no more challenge to Shaw’s authority, and all along he could’ve used Emma, but where would the fun in that have been? The world falls away in layers like meat from a well-cooked bone. Creed ruts into him—it never gets easier, taking his length and girth—but Erik endures it silently. When Emma takes her turn, placing Erik’s ankles on her shoulders and bending him almost fully in half, he says nothing, feels almost nothing; and when Shaw beckons Azazel to take a second turn, he winces, but says nothing then too. And then Shaw. Shaw panting in his ear, Shaw’s prick massaging his insides, Shaw’s knot catching on his cunt. His body betrays him, his body clenches down around Shaw like he was made to do it, and Erik prays that any children will be born of _this_ union, this one, not the ones that came before. A miracle, in essence. He prays for a miracle.

The children are fast asleep when Shaw and Erik stumble inside their tent. Erik doesn’t complain when Shaw mounts him again, and again that night; he imagines Shaw’s come flushing him clean, drowning out the seed of his generals. But he doesn’t fall asleep, either, like he managed that first heat, that first night. He keeps his eyes open in the dark.

When Essex confirms he’s pregnant a month later, he lets himself cry. Just a little, silently, into his arms, tucked up in a little ball against the world. Then he dries his eyes, rises, and goes to Shaw.

Shaw looks pleased when Erik slides into his lap. “Good news, my treasure?” he asks.

“Yes,” Erik says. “I’m pregnant. Again.”

Shaw says nothing, just runs his hand down the curve of Erik’s spine and smiles greedily. Erik takes a deep breath. “Please,” he says, “please, what will it take for you to spare the children, even if they’re not… ‘yours?’ Please, tell me. I’ll do it, I’ll do anything, anything you want.”

Shaw tsks. “Erik,” he says reprovingly. “You know better than that. You want me to waste precious resources on someone else’s children?”

“I’ll care for them myself, you won’t even have to see them,” Erik tries.

“I won’t have you distracted from the important work of caring for my children by someone else’s brats.”

“I won’t be,” Erik says desperately. “We can—we can give them to someone else,” though the idea of someone else raising his babies makes his heart ache, surely it must be better than their deaths. “Or send them to another tribe to be educated. Please, please, alpha, please don’t kill them. I’ll do anything. Anything you want.”

This, at last, seems to get Shaw’s attention. He scrutinizes Erik, a smile playing on his lips. “Anything?” he purrs. “How sweet will you be for me, my treasure?”

Erik grinds down against Shaw’s lap in answer. “Please,” he pants, his heart in his throat. He has no more words, just mute appeal, just the promise of anything Shaw wants, anything in Erik’s power to give. “Please.”

“Show me how much you want it,” Shaw says, “and I will consider your request.”

Erik nearly sobs. “Thank you, thank you—” Shaw is hardening, so Erik slides to the ground between Shaw’s spread knees and unlaces his breeches. He enthusiastically applies his mouth to Shaw’s cock, to the salt-tang of his skin on his tongue, the soft give of his foreskin under his fingers, and Shaw chuckles and sighs and spills in his mouth in record time.

Shaw traces his fingers down Erik’s cheek, smiling. “Yes,” he says. “I think this could be very good for us both.”

And for eight months, Erik caters to Shaw’s every depraved whim. He lets Creed knot him, finally, though he can’t walk for two days afterward, though it takes every inch of skill and guile he has to moan and beg for more as he’s being split open. Shaw seems to delight in sharing this new, eager Erik, who rides him with abandon and initiates sex even when he’s smarting and slick from the last round, with his generals, and so he spends more time in the others’ tents, not just Creed’s for punishment. Emma doesn’t ask for him often. Azazel and Janos like to take him at the same time, but when Shaw doesn’t insist on watching, they simply tell him to sleep on the floor as they fuck each other in Janos’s bed. Erik is grateful for… whatever it is that’s going on between them and has been going on since Erik’s first birth that gives him these nights to rest from Shaw’s insatiable hungers.

Placating him is exhausting. Erik is the ideal mate; he arranges for Shaw’s favorite foods to be brought to him, he instructs the children to be adorable and massage the tension out of their father’s shoulders when he wants it, he sometimes greets Shaw after a long day by getting naked in their bed and presenting his ass for him when he ducks through the tent flap, his massive belly pressed flush against the sheets. It is much worse than the balancing act he used to walk of not getting Shaw angry; now he wants him happy, and Shaw seems to enjoy Erik’s willingness, his pliancy, but is it enough? Is the promise of Erik catering to his every whim for the rest of their lives together an enticing enough offer to win his babies’ lives? 

He gets big as a moon again, though this time he is too tense to enjoy his changing body, to relish the way in which he can feel the babes flicker to life inside of him. It all feels too precarious, too fragile. Pietro likes putting his head on Erik’s belly and giggles whenever a kick flutters under his skin; Wanda speaks seriously to her siblings, telling them about everything she’ll teach them when they come out, and Erik watches them both with mute terror.

This time, Shaw is there when his water breaks; Erik is rising, lumbering to his feet, when something in him _gives way_ and water trickles down his thighs. At once, panic seizes him. Shaw laughs as he scents it, and calls out for Creed in the neighboring tent. This labor goes even faster than the one before, and they barely get him to the birthing tent before the first baby is coming. Erik lets Essex bend his legs back and wails and wails, and for a moment the pain overwhelms the fear, and he thinks of nothing until Essex is lifting the first baby from between his legs and giving it to Creed to sniff and then terror whites out his whole mind.

“No!” he screams at Shaw. “No! You promised!”

“I promised you I’d think about it,” Shaw says primly, “and I have. And as delightful you have been these past months, Erik, I find myself satisfied with your usual grudging obedience… and I have no need for more leverage when the twins exist.”

 _Triplets_ is the word hanging brutal and heavy on Erik’s tongue.

Creed shakes his head—not Shaw’s. Erik’s hand goes to his hair and he plucks a silver ornament from above his ear, one that Shaw hadn’t though to remove when he’d taken him to this place without metal, this place where Erik is helpless as someone without a gift. In a heartbeat a blade that cuts into his palm, and even though cramps rack his body, he throws it at where Creed’s claws are poised above the baby’s heart with unerring aim—

—and Emma’s arm darts out and catches it in midair. She wraps her diamond fist around it, crushing it, and though Erik shouts and yanks mentally for the metal in her fist, her fingers don’t budge.

Shaw makes him watch this time.

As his labor continues, he fights—he never stops fighting—it passes in a blur, of the generals holding him down and Creed shaking his head no, and no again, until Erik is left with empty arms and an empty belly and an empty, black-hole heart. At one point, Azazel, holding his head down as Erik screams through a contraction, murmurs, “The bodies are given back to the stars. We will ensure it. You do nothing but harm to yourself, little one.”

“I have to try,” Erik grits out, before another contraction racks his body. “Don’t you understand that? I have to try.” When the baby Creed lifts is glistening with diamond-skin, he screams at Emma, “If they’re not his, then they’re yours, they’re yours—aren’t you human? That’s _your baby!”_

Emma bends over him and says, almost gently, “Your children have no sire because the Chieftain says so. No one to defend them.” And Creed slays that one, too.

He never even gets a good look at them. All three are given to Creed, all three are marked as illegitimate, all three are killed as Erik is forced to watch. He never even gets to hold them.

Shaw scolds him for not delivering even one legitimate heir, but Erik barely notices it. He _hates_ , but all the fierce fire has been stomped out of him—his hatred is dull and impotent and useless, like a blunted cooking blade. He hears Azazel ask Shaw what they will tell the people about what happened here today, why Erik went to the birthing tent pregnant and returned home with not a single child, and Shaw declare that Erik’s second litter was stillborn. His saying makes it so. Erik supposes that he’s right, in a way. The implication there—that Erik is an unfit dam, too weak to bear live children—it’s true, isn’t it? If he were better, if he were smarter, he’d have found some way to protect them. He’d have pleased Shaw better, he’d have made it worth his while. Creed lifts his limp body into the cart and they take him back to the encampment. Emma and Janos go ahead to clear the way for them, so that when Erik rolls back into the riot of tents no one congratulates him, no one is singing. A pall has settled over the camp. They, too, are in mourning for Erik.

Creed carries him back into the tent he shares with Shaw and lays him down on the bed he shares with Shaw and at once Wanda and Pietro are by his side. “Where are they?” Pietro asks, his high, childish voice uncomprehending.

Erik closes his eyes. Tears slip from beneath his lashes, and he wants to curl up around his flattening belly and say nothing and do nothing and be nothing, but his children are looking at him with large, curious eyes and he has to say something to them. “Your siblings were…” he says, his voice catching and tripping on the enormity of it. He parrots Shaw’s lie, because it is safer for them to believe. And he cannot risk their safety. Not theirs. “They weren’t alive when they were born. I’m sorry.”

“Dead?” Wanda asks. He should be proud of her, that she can puzzle out _dead_ from _not alive._ The twins are only just starting to reason things like that out. All he manages is a blunt-edged swell of sorrow.

“Yes,” he says. Wanda throws her arms around his head. More tears trickle out from his closed eyes.

That night, he curls up, not around the empty space where before there were living children, but around his breathing, three-year-old twins, and cries into their hair, and is glad, or what passes for glad in his life now, that, for at least one night, he can rest with his surviving children near.


	5. I: oh i cantered out here, now i'm galloping back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: rape, threats of rape and violence by a conquering army.
> 
> Title from "WHO REAL؟" by Marwa Helal.

Though he barely leaves the tent in the weeks that follow, he can feel the rumors pressing against the tent flap, peeking through the seams of the fabric, drifting in his wake curiously. Shaw had told them all that Erik's second litter had been stillborn, and Erik knows what they are saying about him, what would have been said about his mother if she'd had a "stillborn" litter. He lies on his back in bed, listening to the children play quietly with each other as though they know he needs the solitude, listens to Angel bring them food and berates himself to get up, to care for his babes, but he can't. He just can't. The bedding seems to suck him in, to swallow him down, and he can barely summon the strength to lift his arms to cuddle his survivors when they ask for it. He’s so _angry_ at himself for believing Shaw, for those nine months giving him whatever he wanted without protest, for debasing himself and not even doing it _well enough_ to be _worth_ anything. He doesn’t cry, because Wanda will cry and then Pietro will cry, and he doesn’t have the energy to comfort them, but in his head a silent scream drowns out all other thought.

One day, perhaps a week from the birth, Angel hesitates when she sets down the tray for the children and goes to Erik, running a gentle hand through his hair. "I know you're not all right," Angel says.

 _You have no idea,_ Erik thinks bitterly. Angel will never know what really happened in the birthing tent. Angel thinks it was his body that failed, not his spirit. Angel hesitates before she says, "They are saying... that the Chieftain hurt you while you were with child… beat you… and that is why the children did not live." 

Erik smiles mirthlessly. "Is that all they're saying?" he asks. Angel hesitates. He knows it's not. He knows that for every person who has sympathy for Erik, there will be another sneering that he's defective, a failed omega, a broken womb. Let them. Erik sacrificed his pride at the altar of Shaw's lusts long ago.

"I know you are strong," Angel says. "The next litter will be as strong as you. I know it."

But Erik can find no comfort in her words. He knows she's wrong. His children aren't strong. They are—were—small, so weak, so vulnerable. Utterly dependent on him, and on Shaw's nonexistent mercy. She's trying to reassure him that stillbirths happen, that it's unlikely to happen again, but Erik can take no solace in her words. Because it _will_ happen again. Shaw will breed him by way of threats against Pietro and Wanda, and then slaughter the fruits of that union, and then start the cycle all over again. He can’t run away. He can’t avoid it. He can’t fight it. "Thank you, Angel," he dismisses her, and she goes, shooting him worried looks over her shoulder. He merely rolls over and closes his eyes and tries to escape into the blissful nothing of sleep.

It is his survivors who pull him out of the fog of grief, of course. Who else? A few days, perhaps a week after the birth—time has gone slippery and shimmery—he wakes to Wanda poking at his cheek determinedly. He raises his head and sits up with difficulty. “Wanda?” he asks. “My little robin? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“ _I’m_ fine, Papa,” Wanda says determinedly. She holds out her silver-haired doll. He takes it hesitantly; he’s not in the mood for playing. “I wanna give you Garur.”

“Garur is yours,” Erik tells her, confused. “Like Kunir is Pietro’s.”

“He’s gonna give you hugs,” Wanda tells him, implacable. “Cause you’re so sad.”

Erik stares at the soft toy, named for a constellation, in his hands and feels, for the first time since that awful day, tears threaten. He takes the memories of the three nameless children burned in the desert and given back to the stars and sets them gently on a shelf in his heart beside Wanda and Pietro’s triplet, and closes the door firmly behind him. He can’t wallow. He can’t shame himself and his dead family by drowning in his own sorrow and anger. He has Wanda and Pietro to think of, Wanda and Pietro who _need_ him, Wanda and Pietro for whom he must be strong, who he must protect from Shaw. He clutches Garur to his chest and takes a deep, steadying breath of the doll’s smell—Wanda and the faintest hint of lavender he’d stuffed the doll’s heart with—and takes a last moment to mourn, a last moment to languish in the sorry pit that’s been made of his heart, and then puts it all aside.

He smiles at Wanda. It is overcast today, thunderclouds threatening, so he doesn’t want to take them outside, even if he could bear the stares and whispers of people who have _no idea_ what happened in the birthing tent. “Is Pietro napping?” he asks. Wanda nods. “Thank you for letting Garur help me,” he tells her softly. “You take him back now, all right? And we can play until Pietro wakes up, and then you can help me clean the tent, yes?”

Wanda hugs him. Fierce and tight, and Erik buries his face in her hair, breathing in the scent that is a little bit him and a little bit Shaw and wholly, entirely, his daughter’s. He runs a hand up and down her back, soothing, regretful that he’s made her worry. Wanda is so sensitive, her emotions so volatile. His little robin. He loves her so, her and her brother both. His survivors are the best thing he’s ever made.

And she tells him the game she and Pietro have been playing with the dolls, a long, involved story about a magic horse coveted both by a warrior and a healer, and he nods and smiles and makes suggestions and plots with Wanda and Garur on how to steal the imaginary horse back from Kunir. That night during supper, he—well, he’s still too worn from birth to chase Pietro with a towel to wipe his mouth clean, so he makes Pietro come to him while he scrubs the stickiness off his face (how _does_ he get so sticky? Wanda is only sticky when she’s been playing in the mud or similar, but Pietro is sticky _all the time_ ). And he tells them a story, one of the legends his mother told him, like he usually does, as he tucks them into bed.

And that night, as though he can sense Erik’s renewed sense of purpose, Shaw returns to their marriage bed and orders Erik to resume his marital duties.

As Shaw pumps his hips at Erik’s ass, he murmurs into the shell of Erik’s ear:

“You won’t be breastfeeding, of course, so your heats will return soon enough. We’ll try again, won’t we, my treasure? And this time it will be better. This time you will succeed.” Erik buries his face into the crook of his arm, feeling hot tears sting at his closed eyes. When one escapes and trickles down his cheek, Shaw licks at it, crooning, “No tears, my treasure. This time, you will succeed. I can feel it.”

It seems an act of divine intervention, then, that before his next heat, Westchester finally grows sick of the ongoing raids along their borders and declares war.

Under the leadership of Erik’s father, the Genoshan tribes maintained a steady, if distant, relationship with Westchester. When Shaw seized power, he turned the focus of the Genoshan raiders northward instead of southward for the first time in living memory, striking a deal with the Carnelians that had helped put him in power and turning to Westchester for riches and spoils. Westchester is a merchant country, and so the riches had been rich indeed. But Westchester has also become, in recent decades, one of the few countries where the Gifted have been as welcome and courted as they are in Genosha—ever since a telepath took the throne of Westchester. Jakob had avoided them as they grew stronger; why borrow trouble? Shaw is not of the same mind.

If this conflict had happened a few years ago, it might have been swift and decisive. But in the past three years, Westchester has also been preparing for war—drilling its armies, wooing more people with gifts to its side. Now, when a Genoshan raiding party on their way out of a pillaged town encounters a Westchesterian force marching south, they are the ones who are slaughtered, instead of doing the slaughtering. And suddenly Erik’s life takes on a different tenor.

Shaw, because he is in the end a canny leader with an instinct for keeping up morale and maintaining loyalty, decides that Erik’s next breeding ceremony in the hopes of siring an alpha heir will mark the Genoshans’ victory over the Westchesterians, and in the meantime allows him to take a potion which staves off heat. Erik is still not allowed to fight, but the encampment soon empties of all the men and women who are allowed. Westchester’s army is vast enough that often the presence of only Shaw and his generals themselves can turn the tide, and even when battles are won by the Genoshans, there are still forces waiting to press forward, to take back the ground that Westchester lost in the last battle. The skirmishes drag on for months, ripen into full-fledged war, with the bulk of the two nations encamped on either side of the Vula river as fall darkens into winter and then returns to spring

Erik misses battle, had never envisioned himself as the kind of omega who would hang back with the children instead of riding to war—his mother had been a formidable warrior herself—but is gratified for the time alone with the children, with Shaw off at the front, and usually Azazel in charge of the small skeleton encampment of Genoshan children and caretakers about four miles back from the river. Azazel shows little interest in lying with Erik when not commanded to by Shaw, unlike Creed, and mostly leaves him alone but to bring him more weapons for Erik to hammer out the flaws in and harden with his signature layered steel. 

Erik grows thinner during this time. Genosha never wants for food, but though Shaw keeps Erik well-fed during his pregnancies and when he’s nursing, he’s not either now, and so Shaw takes pleasure in making him beg to be fed off Shaw’s plate. Angel smuggles him food, but eventually he has to send her away when Creed, during one of his stretches managing the encampment, corners her and something unforgivable almost happens. “Go,” he tells her, though leaving the tribe, which would be frowned upon in peacetime, is treasonous now. “Don’t tell me where, so a telepath can’t force me to betray you. The Westchesterian border is closed to you, but you can still go south or east or west, to Carnelia or the Isle of the Sky or the sea.”

“I won’t leave you alone,” Angel says fiercely, though she is still shaking, though Erik is tenderly wrapping gauze around her arm where Creed’s fingernails had dug into the flesh.

Erik gazes fondly at Pietro and Wanda, who are “helping”—Pietro unspooling and respooling the gauze, Wanda very seriously examining Angel’s other arm and legs for scratches from where she “fell into a winterberry bramble.” “I won’t be alone,” Erik says. “But I can’t protect you, Angel, not like my parents could protect their servants… and I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if something happened to you because you stayed to protect _me._ I am as safe as I am ever going to get.” Angel bites her lip, and Erik knows she is thinking about the rumors of Shaw beating him into near-miscarriage, but that she is also asking herself—and what could I do if he does it again? Nothing, Erik wants to tell her. Just like I could do nothing. At least save yourself. At least let me save you.

So Angel goes, and Erik finds that she is not the only one willing to smuggle him food. Not just his new servant, but the people who come to him to have their weapons and light armor fixed—they bring him nuts or berries as thanks, not the jewelry and fine clothes they would have brought his mother as tribute. They know of Erik’s slow starvation, but instead of shame, all Erik feels is gratitude.

Shaw comes to visit often enough, to bury his cares and losses in Erik’s body. Erik wonders why he rides all the way back to the encampment when he could just make use of one of his camp followers, but Shaw likes telling him stories about Westchester. About their barbarity, about their brutality. Erik should sense that something has changed when Shaw stops telling Erik about how weak Westchester is and starts instead frightening him with stories of how they treat their prisoners, what will happen to Erik and the babies if they win, but he doesn’t. He simply assumes that Shaw doesn’t want him to get any ideas about hoping that Westchester will rescue him, and the stories he tells Erik do their job well. Shaw is a snake but he very rarely outright lies. 

“You wouldn’t last long without my protection,” he coos to Erik one night, as they lie knotted together. “They keep their prisoners in underground cells, never allowed to see the sky, never allowed to breathe fresh air… you’d wither on the vine, my treasure. A pretty thing like you, trapped in the dungeons with a hundred men… to say nothing of the children.” Erik is briefly grateful he didn’t manage the escape to Westchester. He hadn’t thought they’d hurt children—! “I hear it’s not unusual for the King’s mate to only successfully bring one child to term,” Shaw says, and Erik shudders at the _cruelty_ that must occur for to only one baby of a litter to survive—even Erik, stressed and exhausted as he was, managed to bring three healthy babes to term each time before Shaw… before Shaw. 

When Shaw departs, he forces Erik to give a kiss for luck. Sometimes it’s rough and Erik pulls back with stinging spit-slick lips, his mouth red and wet and ready to be plundered, and sometimes Shaw indeed forces him to his knees and has him put his mouth on his cock before he leaves, a different kind of good-luck kiss. Sometimes it’s chaste and almost loving, and these moments are almost worse; they make Erik’s skin crawl. They make Erik wonder what it would be like to have a marriage like his parents’, one of love and light. 

Shaw needn’t trouble himself with stories. Erik is hardly eager for either side to win. It’s possible that life under Westchester could be better than Shaw, but… it’s also possible that it could be worse, and Erik is afraid that he wouldn’t survive worse: rape by commoners, like Shaw suggested, being handed over to the soldiers; or being paraded in front of the Westchesterian people as a spoil of war. He doesn’t want to leave his babies behind. And perhaps Westchester will simply kill all of them anyway as Shaw’s relatives, like Shaw killed his entire family when he defeated his father—and even if Pietro and Wanda are kept alive, as omega bargaining chips in the marriage game of royal life, Erik may never see them again. 

Genosha’s victory is inevitable anyway, he knows, and he dreads it. Dreads being bred again, dreads being in the hell that is that birthing tent, watching his babies being pulled away from him. Dreads, in the longer term, the idea of his sweet children being twisted by Shaw into his heirs; as Pietro and Wanda grow older, he knows, they will have to bow to Shaw’s ideology, and he doesn’t know what would be worse, watching them pay lip service to it as Erik does or watching them fully and wholly believe it. He is grateful for the reprieve Westchester has offered him. He could stay in this limbo forever, watching Wanda and Pietro celebrate their fourth birthday, with Shaw gone more often than not.

Except then they don’t win.

The Westchesterians take the river, and the Genoshans fall back to the encampment. Their numbers depleted, the warriors thin from a lean winter when Westchester’s been shuttling its grain and food stores to their army so that they’re well-fed and fresh; not even Shaw, who slaughters everyone in his path, can turn the tide of a mismatch this terrible. For Erik, it comes suddenly. He looks up one day from where he’s sharpening knives outside, relishing the cold-turning-to-sunlight of the dawn, when suddenly hoofbeats split the air and a host of warriors ride back into camp, with Shaw and his generals at their head at their head. Erik glances up and stares. They are bloody and road-worn and _defeated_.

Shaw tosses his reins aside and strides up to Erik, grabbing his arm, hauling him back in the tent. The moment the flap flutters down, Shaw is kissing him, brutal and fierce, his fingers working at the laces of Erik’s breeches. “We make our last stand here,” he murmurs, as Erik struggles to adjust to a changing world. “But before we kill or die, my treasure, let’s have one more moment together, yes?”

As outside, the Genoshans prepare to battle to the last man, Erik spreads his legs for Shaw for, his pounding heartbeat tells him, what might be the last time. It hurts. Shaw fucks him with such intensity, his supernatural strength no longer restrained, that Erik suspects Shaw is trying to kill him before the Westchesterians get his hands on them. His excitement, his fear, his anticipation, all fade away as he clings onto the bedsheets, is carried along and away by Shaw’s lusts, the pain of being battered open. No longer satisfied with how tight Erik is, Shaw shoves in his fingers alongside his cock, and Erik keens pitifully. For long instants, he forgets why Shaw is fucking him like there’s no tomorrow and loses his own self and name in the pain of being ripped open.

Shaw knots him, then with a vicious tug tears the knot out of Erik’s hole. Erik wails. He feels himself begin to bleed. He lies there, nearly insensate, as Shaw dresses and slides the plug inside of him. “In case we pull off a miracle,” he tells Erik, and presses a kiss to his forehead, “I want you ready for the breeding ceremony. And if we don’t… you’ll thank me when the soldiers come to take you.” Erik barely understands what he’s saying. Shaw drags the blanket up over Erik’s body and lets him pass out.

When Erik opens his eyes, he knows the battle on the encampment limits is going poorly. He can feel the metal of the weapons he poured his soul into lying scattered on the ground where their bearers fell. Some are still aloft, but not many. The Westchesterians will be in the camp soon. He forces himself upright, ignoring the splitting pain in his backside, and goes to where Wanda and Pietro have returned from playing outside. Pietro is peeking out of the tent flap as though he can see the battle; Wanda is clutching Garur to her side and mumbling into his hair.

Erik kneels down and gathers them together. He tells them stories to keep their minds off the battle being fought right now. All they remember is war, but this is different; this is a final battle, vicious and brutal, that might decide their lives being fought a scant two miles from them. The people around them are frightened and praying and weeping, and though they don’t quite understand what’s going on, they know to be scared too. Erik does his best to lift that fear, telling them stories about the great hero Ester, who stole the moon for the goddess Wenda’s favor, Wanda’s namesake, the story about the sun falling in love with Ruti and leaving from his post in the sky to follow him around and protect him. Their favorites tales and Erik’s favorite tales. As sun drags higher through the gauzy stripes of cloud, he feels more and more of his weapons fall to the ground and fail to be picked up again.

Just before noon, a rider tears through the camp, screaming, “All is lost! All is lost! Westchester approaches!” and Erik takes a deep breath and scoops up his children and brings them to the large chest at the foot of the bed. From their father’s lantern, he unweaves braids of metal, and binds them around Pietro and Wanda’s wrists, so that he can always find them, if he lives, and for them to remember him, if he doesn’t. “Listen to me,” he says softly. “Listen, my loves. You must stay in the trunk, and stay very quiet, all right?” Hopefully one of Shaw’s servants will think to look for them. “I know you’re very brave, but you must show it now. I love you.” He presses a kiss to each of their foreheads. They look at him with large, luminous eyes. “I love you. I will come back for you. If I can.”

“Don’t go,” Pietro whimpers.

“I’ll be right outside,” Erik promises. “Keeping you safe. As always.”

He closes the trunk on them and locks it with his gift. Then he picks up Shaw’s dagger—beautiful, polished steel, with pools of color like liquid rippling in the surface—and turns to the tent flap. His heartbeat is slow. His grip on the dagger is relaxed. He knows how to do this. It has been years, but he knows how to be a warrior.

When the first Westchesterian soldier comes through the tent flap, Erik slits his throat easily.

He collapses in a clang of armor, which alerts others. They figure out this is the chieftain’s tent soon enough, and swarm him; Erik sends his dagger through the weak point between groin plate and thigh plate of one soldier, slicing through the femoral artery. He strikes one soldier with his elbow in the helmet, and sends him stumbling back into another’s arms; he yanks their swords out of their hands and bends their blades into useless knots. He summons the dagger back to his hand, throws it, angles it straight through another soldier’s visor—he screams, scrabbling at his face, as blood pours from the slit in his helmet. Erik takes the blade again, kicks him aside, and lunges for the nearest soldier—

—but he freezes mid-motion—

—time is passing, the soldiers are moving around him, regrouping, but he can’t command his limbs—he can’t control his body—he recognizes this feeling from when Emma had frozen him during the coup. A telepath has burrowed into his mind and wound their sticky fingers into his brain. Of course Westchester has telepaths. The soldiers swarm around him, prying the dagger from his hands, and then snapping something around his neck—at once, the world reorients—as though he’s lost one of his senses, which he has. He can no longer feel the metal on the battlefield he poured his sweat and labor into, he can no longer feel the metal of the dagger, he _can no longer feel_ the metal of the bracelets wound around his children’s arms.

When the telepath releases him, he screams in fury and finishes the movement, throwing himself at a nearby soldier, prying the helmet off and snapping his neck a single, clean motion—but the other soldiers are reaching for him, throwing him down. One takes each of his arms and together they drag him down to his knees; more soldiers, with fresh weaponry, are pouring into the tent and one places a blade at Erik’s throat. They bark something harsh and cruel in Westchesterian, and yet another soldier holds the tent flap open for someone new to enter, striding in in full plate armor and chainmail, gilded and painted with bright blue and gold—the colors of Westchester. An officer, then—perhaps the telepath. He’s followed by a red-haired woman in a green dress and two more men who hold themselves with the bearing of important people, one in full armor, like the leader, one in simple mail.

Erik glares up at the leader. He may be helpless, but he won’t grovel and quake like he did with Shaw. Not again.

The first thing he registers is blue eyes.  
  
  
  
END PART ONE.


	6. II: my heartbeat echoing out of my folkloric thirst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: aftermath of rape.
> 
> Title from "Woman in Dub," by Desiree C. Bailey.

PART TWO  
  
  
  
CHARLES

The first thing Charles registers is that the omega on his knees is _beautiful._

He is slim, bright-eyed, with curling hair that balances on the edge of brown and red, and lovely creamy skin, sun-touched but otherwise naturally pale, on display. The only thing he is wearing loose breeches around his hips. He looks at Charles with such fire and hatred that Charles, telepath that he is, instantly thinks he knows _everything_ about him, how brave he is, how fierce he is, how much love and care and devotion there is buried under that fire. The more Charles stares at him, the more he sees his _soul_ shining out through those eyes, the more Charles is convinced that he is not just beautiful—he is the most beautiful omega Charles has ever had the fortune to lay eyes on.

This, Charles realizes, must have been Sebastian Shaw’s mate.

The realization settles like a weighted blanket over his shoulders. Of course Shaw would’ve claimed such a startling prize for himself; of course a creature like this would belong to the highest-ranking alpha of Genoshan society. And of course, it explains why he’s here, in the grandest and largest tent in the center of the Genoshan encampment.

A pity. Beautiful and proud and deadly and probably _loyal_ , and he’s not going to force the omega to lie with the man who killed his mate. Still. It would be something to place him in a tower—he’s royalty of a conquered nation, he’ll have to be imprisoned anyway—and just look upon him. The omega is eyeing him with utter, proud disdain, and Charles realizes with a hint of a smile that he recognizes the way Charles is looking at him now—like a wolf that has just spied something to eat, like a hunter, like an alpha.

The omega says something in the harsh, guttural language of the Genoshans. Jean flushes red. Interested, Charles slips into the omega’s mind, where the meaning of his words is still rattling around his head: “If you stick your cock in my mouth I’ll bite it off.”

Charles barks out a laugh. Fire and passion and fierce storms indeed. “No need for that,” he says, translating in the omega’s mind. The omega’s gaze sharpens with caution. _Telepath!_ he thinks, with a sudden awareness of how dangerous Charles is. Charles smiles. It’s so lovely to be correctly estimated. People see the limp, they see the cane, and they think they know everything there is to know about him. The omega hasn’t noticed his infirmity yet, but has a sharp sense of the threat Charles represents. “Do you know who I am, little omega?”

“You’re a vulture,” the omega sneers. “A carrion-eater and a scavenger. You’ve come to pick at the remains of my people after your soldiers have done the work of slaughter.”

“The slaughter is over,” Charles tells him. “The war is won. I am your King now, little omega; Charles X of Westchester. And you are now my captive.” He can feel the omega’s emotions shift, but not toward deference; toward defensiveness. His eyes flash, calculating; a whisper of scenarios as he works out what’s likely to happen next. The omega’s mind ticks along, quick and orderly, and Charles is captivated by its workings, drawn in by its beauty, as undeniable as his physical beauty.

The omega tips his chin up. “And what will you—”

But at that moment, the chest at the foot of the pile of furs and blankets the Genoshans call a bed shifts, as though there’s something inside it. A soldier’s eyes go wide; he draws his sword and advances on it. “A trick!” he shouts.

The omega screams, not the sound of an enemy spy foiled, but the desolate, heartbreaking scream of someone losing everything. Charles’s eyes flicker to the chest, where, indeed, he can feel two minds—stupid, he should’ve scanned the tent before coming in—but in an instant he realizes that they’re the expansive and intense thoughts of children, not an adult soldier. In an instant, he’s behind one of their eyes. _Papa using his gift to fasten a metal cuff around her arm, and one for Pietro—”So I can find you,” he says softly, “or to remember me. Listen, my loves. You must stay in the trunk, and stay very quiet, all right? I know you’re very brave, but you must show it now.”_

_“Don’t go,” Pietro whimpers._

_“I love you,” Papa says, and closes the lid on the trunk at the end of his and the chieftain’s bed. “I will come back for you. If I can.” The catch clicks, and she can hear her brother whimpering in the darkness—the sounds of battle—she grips his hand, concentrating hard—people shouting, and she tries to be brave, like Papa said she was. And then Papa screams. They’re used to his cries of pain, but this is different, this is a sound like his soul is being ripped from him, like in the stories, and she stuffs a fist in her mouth to muffle her own cry and red sparks flicker out of her fingers—the lock unclicks—_

“Stop!” Charles shouts, reaching out with his telepathy, and the soldier freezes, his sword poised above the chest, ready to stab into it—the omega has tears on his face, his chest heaving as he watches the sword dangle above the trunk, like he can’t tear his eyes from it. But just as Charles turns to reassure him that no one will harm his children, the girl shoves the lid of the trunk open and the boy spills from it, his fists clenched.

“Pietro, run!” the omega screams. “Take your sister and _run!”_ but Charles is still half inside their minds, and he can feel the boy’s determination, echoed by the girl’s. The boy barrels into an enemy soldier faster than Charles can blink—the only reason he knows that the boy is merely fast, not a teleporter, is because he’s clinging onto the edges of the boy’s mind—and the girl faces other soldiers with red flashing in her hands. She flings red light at one of the soldiers, aiming to _hurt_ , but though Charles reaches out to stop her, when the bolt of light impacts, all it does is change the color of their armor, from silver to gold.

A few soldiers converge on her—the omega is screaming—she throws light and they flinch back, now in plate mail of green and blue—finally Logan gently scoops her up, now in pink and red, and buckles a tiny collar around her throat. She fights, pushing at his bulky arm, but he gently sets her down next to the omega, who tries to curl his body around her, no matter that he is still being held by two soldiers of his own.

The boy has caused an equal ruckus, tripping up soldiers; he’s rushed straight to his Papa, and is now trying to pry the collar from his neck. Jean, who must be in his mind as well, lifts him away with her telekinesis, and Scott takes another tiny collar and gently places it around the boy’s neck as well. At once, his struggles become visible, not just a blur of silver and flesh and fur. Jean gently lowers him to the ground, where he runs to the omega, who tries to tuck him into his body.

The omega is _sobbing._

And as Charles listens, the sobs coalesce into words. He’s in the omega’s mind, but can’t translate, because the omega is barely even _thinking_ about what he’s saying, just words flowing from his soul to his mouth; he looks at Jean helplessly, who looks a little queasy. “He’s begging you not to hurt them,” Jean says lowly. “He’s… he’s promising anything…” and judging from the hot blush on her face, Charles can guess at the tenor of what exactly _anything_ means. He curses himself for his obvious interest, which the omega had seen—he’s not going to coerce him into his bed for his children’s safety. He tells the omega this, but the poor thing can hardly hear him over his gasping, much less interpret the words in his mind.

Charles goes to him, kneels down, though his leg protests fiercely. Even with his hands tied behind his back, he’s trying to protect them with his body. He presses his forehead to the omega’s, and plunges into his fevered, churning mind.

 _Erik,_ he gleans, savoring the sound of his name. The clipped syllables and cold vowels of Genosha, transmuted into something beautiful. The omega—Erik—is near-hysterical. He sees his children with tiny power-suppressing collars on and is thinking, _Failed, failed, I couldn’t protect them_ —

 _Erik,_ he thinks, _calm._ He infuses Erik with a sense of peace, and slowly his sobs quiet, slowly his breaths slow. _I won’t hurt them. No one will hurt them,_ he thinks, letting Erik feel the sincerity of his thoughts. _Your children are in no danger. They are hostages of Westchester now, and under my protection. And I will protect them._

Erik turns his tear-stained face to look up at Charles. _What will you do with us?_ he thinks, all his fierce bravado stripped away.

 _Take you back to Westchester_ , Charles tells him. The rest of the details are fuzzy, and he shows Erik that, determined to share with him the truth—but Erik cannot stay in Genosha, not when he is a natural rallying point for any rebellion against Westchester. _But you will be safe, and the children will be safe. What are their names?_

 _…The girl is Wanda_ , Erik thinks. In spite of his fear, pride bursts in him. _The boy is Pietro._

 _Lovely,_ Charles thinks. Without thinking, he cards a hand through Erik’s hair; surprise burns through them both. Erik shudders at his touch, but doesn’t pull away. Charles rather suspects it’s because he’s worried that not reciprocating Charles’s attentions will cause him to take out his frustrations on the children, but he has no words to reassure him, none more than he’s already given. _Come,_ Charles thinks, and instructs the soldiers telepathically to help Erik up. _We’ll have you sent to the castle now._ There is more work to do here, but his trusted generals can handle it; the important work of securing the royal family of Genosha Charles can take on himself. And if he has more time to spend with the omega, to convince him that he's not a monster… well, all the better.

As he helps Erik to his feet, he's not too besotted to notice the way Logan sniffs the air, suddenly tense. "My lord," he says, with none of the insouciance that always makes Charles remember when he was small and Logan was his regent and he called him "Chuck," "blood. He's injured."

It takes Charles a moment to notice the blood seeping through Erik's trousers.

He growls. Erik stiffens, watches him warily, as Charles brings his fingers to his inner thigh; they come away bloody, having soaked through the fine fabric of his breeches. Jean gasps. Charles feels briefly sorry that he has brought her to this arena of war, when she should be sheltered from the horrors that are of a pace with battle. "Who did this to you?" Charles snarls. He’ll have the soldier who thought to take such liberties with an enemy omega—much less a _royal_ enemy omega—executed, he’ll have them on the rack before the day is out.

Now that he’s paying attention, he’s shocked and horrified by the sheer _amount_ of blood—it is _very_ difficult to injure an omega during sex, their bodies are built for rough fucking, so for a soldier to leave him bloody and injured this badly they must have been sadistic as well as immoral. Scott shifts behind him, and Charles can feel the _fury_ radiating off of both him and Logan—it is their responsibility to make sure that things like this don’t happen. He scans the minds of the soldiers in the room, but comes up with nothing; guilt, that they were attempting to manhandle an omega that has been hurt so badly, disgust, that someone would dare hurt a creature as precious and weak as an omega like this. He shakes Erik gently. “Who?” he says, insistently, but trying not to frighten the poor thing.

Erik scowls stubbornly, though Charles is in his mind and knows he understands him, and shakes his head. Charles sighs and, his hand gentle on Erik’s elbow, raises two fingers to his temple to focus his telepathy, sifting through Erik’s memory. Erik struggles against him—someone has taught him basic telepathic shielding techniques—but Charles is powerful, and he gently sets aside Erik’s shields. _Show me who hurt you,_ he commands, and against Erik’s will images rise up to the surface of his mind—a man over him, the scream he let out as the knot was wrenched out of him, Shaw’s face floating above him like a moon—

Charles jerks back, feeling sickness rise in the back of his throat. His _mate._ His mate had done this to him. Shaw’s laughing mockery paints itself on the back of Charles’s eyelids. Erik looks away angrily, a faint blush of humiliation staining his cheeks, and Charles aches for him. There is no shame in it—only shame in being monstrous enough to treat your own mate with such disdain, such disregard. He remembers the panic in Shaw’s eyes as Charles froze him, as Raven drove her sword through his throat. It is small consolation when the evidence of what might have been prevented if he’d only stopped Shaw sooner, during the battle on the Vula river, is shaking and bleeding in front of him.

(Had Erik _killed_ all of these soldiers while blood still trickled down his thighs? Charles feels his heart skip a beat at the courage that required, the skill of it. Even a captain of the guard may have been hard-pressed to hold his own while five soldiers rushed at him; Erik is _extraordinary,_ an omega so fierce, fighting so hard to protect his children, Charles has never seen the like of him before and wagers he never will again.)

“You needn’t worry,” Charles tells Erik, as gentle as possible. “You’re safe now.”

“Am I?” Erik asks ironically.

“Yes,” Charles tells him, “for Sebastian Shaw is dead.”

Erik stares at him for a long moment. “Are—are you sure?” he asks.

Charles shows him the memory, the blood on Raven’s sword, the light draining out of Shaw’s eyes. Erik blinks, and fat wet tears roll down his cheeks, and Charles starts at the show of grief—surely he isn't grieving the monster who treated him so—but perhaps that is normal for Genosha? what does he know of their private bedroom practice, though the very thought that this precious creature has become used to such mistreatment makes him sick—but then Erik begins to laugh, sharp, jagged laughter, and he is crying too, but laughing through it. Is the pretty thing having a breakdown? Erik sways forward, and Charles’s arms come around him instinctively, tucking Erik’s face into the crease where his neck and shoulder meet, regretting the cold armor that comes between them. 

Charles holds Erik as he sobs, his mouth twisted into a joyous grin, and the tendrils Charles cast through Erik’s mind tremble in the wake of the storm of Erik’s emotions, the deep, cleansing turmoil, the thunderous, crashing, conflicted terror and hope. 


	7. II: long enough walled love away from love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: aftermath of rape, sexual harassment by a villainous character.
> 
> Title from "A Prayer for Rain" by Lisel Mueller.

JEAN

A pang of foreboding goes through Jean as she watches Charles set eyes on the Genoshan chieftain’s mate for the first time. The _greed_ in his gaze, the way his eyes trace down the omega’s body, not lewdly but certainly appreciatively—this is not Charles’s first war, but she’s never seen him as the type to stake his claim over his enemies’ omegas. She’s never known Charles to partake in omega flesh at _all_ —he’s had his dalliances over the years, with Lady Haller, he very nearly married Lady MacTaggart when Jean was young—but the way he drags his eyes, covetously, over the Genoshan boy now… she’s never seen anything like it from him before. He looks like a common soldier whistling at the whores leaning out of their windows in the city, like a dog slavering over a piece of meat. She sends him a reproving mental pinch, and he regretfully lets go of the weeping and laughing omega, whose tears and laughter have been slowly diminishing.

 _What?_ he says. His mental voice drips with annoyance.

 _You can’t possibly be thinking what I think you’re thinking,_ Jean tells him. _The poor thing’s injured! He needs medical treatment, not for you to—to throw him down on that sorry excuse for a bed and have your way with him!_

 _I wasn’t,_ Charles protests, but it sounds false to them both.

Jean goes over to the omega and reaches for rope tying his wrists together behind his back. Scott makes a noise of protest, but she shakes her head—surely he can see the poor boy’s no threat to her, especially not with the collar on—and undoes the knots with a little difficulty; her fingers are not calloused like the soldier who tied him up. “Come,” she tells him in Genoshan. “We’ll get your… injury looked at.”

She’s quietly impressed that he sustained no injury from the soldiers who attempted to subdue him; a wounded omega, who still managed to fight to protect his children—so strong, and he shouldn’t have to be. He tilts his head at her. From him, she can feel that _he_ is quietly impressed at a Westchesterian who knows Genoshan. “Who are _you_?” he asks suspiciously. “You’re not a warrior.”

She smiles at him. “My name is Jean Grey,” she says. “I’m a diplomat. What is your name?”

“…Erik,” the omega says. Erik Shaw, then, if he was really mated to the chieftain. He rubs the blood back into his hands, and Jean holds out her own for him to take. Hesitantly, he slips his hand into hers, and lets her lead him out of the tent so that the soldiers can continue sweeping the encampment. His other hand drifts down to his side and is taken by the boy twin; without prompting, he clings to the girl twin, so that Erik is connected to both his children in a vulnerable line. Jean smiles at them; the girl stares back shyly while the boy ducks his head to avoid eye contact.

Erik limps after Jean to the the smallest of the medical tents, set up for high-ranking generals who have sustained injury, or, god forbid, the King, and set slightly apart from where the groaning injured masses lie in lines on the floor; Jean calls out to Hank telepathically from where he’s helping the other healers, and he meets them at the tent flap. “This is Erik,” she says. “He’s Shaw’s mate, and he’s been… ill-used.”

Hank blanches, but tries to smile at Erik. Erik looks back at him stonily. Charles tries to duck inside after Hank, but Jean catches him by the shoulder and scowls at him, and he desists. This is an ordeal that isn’t going to be helped by the presence of an alpha. And he’s not the only one whose should be kept busy outside. She gestures for Erik to enter the tent, but stops him when he tries to bring the children with him. “They… they shouldn’t see this,” Jean murmurs, and Erik turns bone-white.

“Please, no,” he says, “please, I’m fine, I don’t want to be separated from them—”

Hearing the world _separated_ , the boy starts to cry. The girl stares fiercely at Jean, silent tears streaming down her face as well. Jean bites her lip nervously. She can feel the thoughts racing in Erik’s head—the horror, the irrational fear that he might turn his back on them and never see them again, the fore-specter of grief unending—and tells him, “No harm will come to them, I give you my word.”

“What is a Westchesterian’s word worth?” Erik says, without rancor, but still blunt, and Jean winces. It’s not that she doesn’t _understand_ —of course the poor boy is confused about where the honor of this war lies—but it would be _easier_ if he were deferential and sweet, like omegas ought to be. 

“How is this?” Charles says; Erik turns to look at him, like he knows he’s being addressed. Charles must be using his telepathy to translate again. “I’ll stay with the children, and keep them telepathically connected to you. If anything— _anything_ —goes wrong you can be outside in a heartbeat.”

Erik stares into Charles’s eyes, then nods slowly. He gently pries the children’s fingers from his breeches, speaking to them in tones that are too low and fast for Jean to catch, pushing them gently toward Charles. Charles already has his fingers to his temple, and he smiles at them, a little awkwardly. He dotes upon young Kurt and Marie, Raven’s children, but in a distant, avuncular fashion—he doesn’t spend much time with them when their parents aren’t there as well. He holds out his hand, but neither of them take it; they cling to each other instead.

“What were you doing before you were hiding in a trunk?” Charles tries.

The boy scowls at him. The girl, though, says, shyly, “We were telling stories.”

“Can you tell me a story?” Charles asks. The girl hesitates, looking back at Erik, before she side-steps her way into a story about the sun falling in love with the great hero Ruti. Jean is interested—she knows this story herself, as a somewhat archaic fable about a woman named Rumi—but takes Erik gently by the elbow as he watches the children anxiously and steers him inside.

Hank is getting a low examination cot set up. Jean stands protectively at Erik’s elbow as he slowly limps over, his gaze abstracted, his mind clearly with his children outside. “You’ll need to disrobe,” she says delicately. Mechanically, Erik pulls down his breeches and sits on the cot. Like this, the blood on his thighs is lurid and sickening. Jean swallows, before placing a gentle hand on Erik’s shoulder. He blinks at her, startled, but doesn’t push her away.

“Please—” Hank blushes. He’s the Royal Physician not because of his tact and way with people, but because he is the cleverest and deftest graduate of the Medical Academy in years. “Please… spread your legs.” Jean translates for him. Erik watches Hank with cold, unamused eyes before he turns his head away and spreads his legs. Hank steps between his knees, and pauses; a sharp intake of breath has Jean’s head shooting up. “Do you—” Hank clears his throat. “Do you have… a medical condition that requires you to… wear a plug?”

That last word Jean isn’t sure how to translate. But Erik shakes his head, having figured it out, just as it hits her what Hank is talking about, and she goes faint and trembly around the edges. “My alpha wanted me to be prepared,” Erik says tonelessly. “In case of victory. For the orgy.”

Horror pulses through Jean. She knows all the rumors about what happens in Genoshan bedrooms, of course—and, occasionally, outside of them—but to have this particular rumor, about what is done to the chieftain’s mate, _confirmed_ , when Erik is in such a bad way—it’s sickening, it’s terrifying. Hank shares with her a horrified look, and then ducks his head down and, with the gentle touch he’s famous for, begins to slowly extricate the plug. Erik sighs, somewhat impatiently, and tips his head back; his eyes are glassy, obviously focusing on Charles and the children’s foreign presence in his mind. With a squelch, the plug slides out of him, and Hank drops it with badly-concealed disgust into a steel bowl by his side. Jean catches a glimpse of it; it is ruddy with blood and come. She feels sick.

“Lady Grey,” Hank says, kindly, obviously having caught sight of her distress, “do you think you could help bathe the…” he struggles with a title for the mate of a Genoshan chieftain, “…the prince’s upper half while I attend to his lower half?” Relieved to have something to do, Jean agrees, and takes up a bowl of water. Erik is streaked with the blood of the soldiers he had fought, and Jean runs a clean cloth over his hands and forearms, rinsing away the scum of battle he should have never been in. When she glances up, Erik is staring at her, no longer far away with his children, scrutinizing her like he’s not sure what to make of her.

Hank finds a healing salve and gently applies it to Erik’s hole, then cleans the blood from his buttocks and thighs and calves the way Jean is doing. Jean’s not sure how long it takes—less than an hour, certainly—but Erik is at last presentable, and the analgesic salve should be relieving some of his pain. A servant, at Jean’s telepathic request, brings Erik some plain but good-quality clothes for omegas, and Jean helps him into the robe, fastening the catches for him when Erik fumbles them. It has been less than an hour in this omega’s company, and yet Jean finds herself fiercely protective of him. He is so brave, and cares so obviously much for his children, and… and Westchester should be a place of safety for him, and yet the way Charles eyes him ravenously concerns her. She smiles tremulously at him and he blinks back, a little uncertain of her. No smile yet, but they’ll get there.

“Are your children well?” she asks him.

“Yes,” Erik murmurs. “I… your King has taken care.” He seems surprised by this. Jean is a little surprised herself.

“Do you want to return to your tent and get anything you require for the journey to Westchester?” she asks. “Charles will keep you linked, and we’ll leave soon… you might not get another opportunity.”

Erik hesitates, glancing at the tent flap separating him from his children, then nods. Jean leads him through the rear of the medical tent back toward the Genoshan encampment. Erik looks uncomfortable in his new clothes, for all that they are plain silk and slightly too simple for his station. Back in the tent, she expects a chest of jewels and clothes, but Erik stoops to pick up a pair of soft, ragged dolls from the ground. He sets them gently on the bed before he picks up a small chest nearly concealed by the bedclothes and—oh goodness—smashes it open on the ground. He sifts through the gold and jewels there and plucks out a simple golden necklace. He strings it around his neck, over the collar, and then picks up the dolls and looks at Jean expectantly.

“That’s it?” she asks. “You don’t want…” She gestures at the finery spilling out from the broken trunk.

“Those are all the spoils of my husband’s raids,” Erik says indifferently. “I want my mother’s necklace and the children’s toys, that’s all.”

Jean nods, a little stunned, and then takes his arm and brings him back out of the tent. Erik glances over his shoulder at it as they leave, a complex expression on his face—Jean sympathizes. This must have been where he’d endured unimaginable torments as the mate of that monster, but it was also his home, and the home of his children, for many years. She had not imagined that Genoshans could feel attached to a place, nomadic as they are, but perhaps one’s own tent is different.

She brings Erik back to his children. Charles is smiling at them, a crooked, genuine grin she has rarely seen from him, as the girl chatters, now fearless, and the boy pipes up every now and then. He’s looking at them—not like he looked at Erik, with hunger, but a little like he sometimes looks at Jean, with a deep fondness and care. “Papa!” the girl says, and rushes over to him. Erik stoops to sweep her up in his arms. “Did you know that Charles doesn’t know _any_ of the Avram stories? Those are my _favorites!”_

“I didn’t know that, little robin,” Erik says sweetly. “Did you tell him the stories?”

“I told him the one about the grasshopper and the one about the ship and the one about the moon-horse,” the girl babbles. “Pietro said I got the ship one wrong but he doesn’t listen at _all_ when you tell stories.”

“They’re just stories, little robin,” Erik says with amusement. “They can go however you like.” Clearly this is not the answer the girl was hoping for, as she pouts dramatically and Erik, smiling, runs a hand over her head and her thick reddish hair. “I’ll tell you the story again for bed tonight, all right, and you can tell me if _I_ have it wrong,” he says, and then shoots Jean a furtive glance, as though he’s not sure whether or not he can make promises that far into the future. Jean smiles at him reassuringly. He hands the girl and their boy their dolls, and they exclaim over them and hug them, and then straightens, one hand on each of their shoulders. He looks at Jean expectantly. “Well?” he asks. “What is to become of us now?”

Jean hesitates. They can’t ride—the children are too small, and Erik is still injured. Charles steps behind her, places a hand on her shoulder, and says, “They can ride back with me in the carriage, Jean.”

Jean frowns at him. “I’ll come with you,” she declares to Charles in Westchesterian.

“Are you certain the armistice won’t need you?” Charles asks. “That is why you insisted on coming, isn’t it?”

“I insisted on coming so that if we found high-ranking prisoners I could speak to them, reassure them,” Jean says. “We’ve done that, and now we’re taking them back to Westchester, so I should escort them, and you can stay behind.”

“I would like to see them settled in,” Charles says mildly.

Jean bites her lip. “I’d wager you’d like to see a good deal more than that.”

Charles tilts his head. “Are you… worried about me, Jean?”

“I’m worried about _him,_ ” she says. “The poor thing’s been through enough, Charles.”

“Whatever do you think it is I plan to do to him?” Charles asks, light, curious.

“Whatever it is you think of when you look at him,” Jean says. “You’re hardly subtle, Charles. Please, let him at least recover in peace.”

“I wouldn’t hurt an injured omega,” Charles points out.

“I know,” Jean says, chastised. “I know. It’s just… everything afterward that I’m concerned about.”

She loses the fight, of course. Charles tells her, in his Kingly voice, that they will all travel back together in his carriage, and she shuts her mouth, because she has no recourse to argument. At least he’s letting her join them; she had pointed out that he would need a guard, and in lieu of bringing one of the generals back, he is letting her act as his guard. In a courtly gesture that Jean can’t help but look askance at, Charles takes Erik’s arm to lead him on, and they walk past the medical tents, and the staging ground, and finally, just before the carriage, a long line of chained prisoners, high-ranking officials in the Genoshan army, that will follow them, to be transported to Westchester in victory and then interred in the dungeons. 

As they pass, a certain prisoner begins to shout. He’s the large, shaggy general, the only one that they had captured—two more had escaped, and Frost had agreed to betray her master in exchange for power after the war. He shouts something in Genoshan at Erik, and Jean nearly freezes. Surely he hadn’t said—

Erik doesn’t even look up.

Jean struggles to find a polite way to check her understanding. “Did he say—” she asks, wishing that Erik weren’t a prince of his people, that she could dive into his mind and really check to see whether Creed had shouted, _With what’s going to happen to you, you should be grateful Sebastian let me split you open on my cock._ Erik looks at her calmly, and she knows at once that her understanding isn’t flawed.

“What?” Charles asks sharply.

Jean shakes her head. “Don’t look,” she begs. “Don’t look into his mind. It was cruel, and vulgar, and—it will only enrage you.” Regardless of Charles’s… appetites, Jean knows that he does _care_ for Erik already, more than he should care for a strange injured omega, even as an honorable man. Charles cares quickly and intensely, an impulse he has had to prune in himself as King; Erik is the first person he’s latched onto in a long time. And he doesn’t deserve to here that filth about someone that he cares for.

Charles looks at her, then nods slowly, and Jean is relieved that she is able to protect him from Creed, at least, if not Erik. “Are you all right?” she asks him lowly in Genoshan, and Erik shrugs. She resolves to have Creed transported with the very last of the prisoners, at the opposite end of the supply chain as the King and his carriage. “You won’t ever have to see him again,” Jean reassures him, and Erik nods like he doesn’t believe her.

Jean is a little startled at how vulgar the Genoshans are, even an omega like Erik, snapping out threats about biting cocks off, talking blandly and bluntly about the orgy Shaw had had planned. It’s all right now, she reassures herself. Erik will be with civilized people now, and no one will hurt him again—if she can just restrain Charles and his perverse lusts. With newfound determination, she leads them forward and arranges for the horses to be hitched to the carriage. Charles swings himself inside with a well-practiced motion, then holds out a hand to help Erik up. Jean follows them in last, sitting beside Charles so that Erik can hug his children to himself on the bench opposite. She listens to the horses settle into the harness and watches as Erik throws a hand against the window, looking vaguely sick, as the horses begin to move.

To Westchester, then.


	8. II: a greed of bruised gardenias

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: imagined rape.
> 
> Title from "The Poet Goes About Her Business," by Linda Gregg.

ERIK

The King walks with a limp.

It is well-concealed; there must be something in his armor that functions as a brace, allows him to walk without a cane or a crutch. If he can ride, Erik knows, he can fight; a telepath is always a dangerous foe on the battlefield. If he’s strong enough, he can command soldiers to kill themselves, or their fellows; he can send whole companies to sleep. And he killed Shaw, in spite of Emma’s protection; so he must be very strong indeed.

Even if he dies, at least he outlived the bastard. At least there’s that.

Erik watches him warily as the carriage slowly pulls along. He’s never been in a carriage before. As they ford the Vula, he glances out the small window of the carriage, and has to stare. He’s never crossed the river, either; it’s generally understood that the Vula splits Westchesterian and Genoshan territory, and he has never left the plains, save for a few raids when his parents were alive. The water rushes under the carriage, and he feels briefly worried that they’ll be swept away. He clutches Wanda and Pietro closer to him. Wanda is very sleepy; she tucks her head into his waist and grumbles. Pietro is still scared. He clings to Erik’s sleeve and Erik makes a soft shushing noise and runs his hand over his head.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to them next, but whatever it is, he’ll fight for them. The Westchesterians may lock _him_ underground, without access to the sun and the wind and the sky, but he will see if he can coax Jean into making sure the children are taken care of, and he thinks his odds are good, Jean has been very kind to them. Maybe better if he sucks the King off before he asks.

“How does a diplomat ride in the same carriage as the King?” he asks.

It’s Charles who smiles and answers—he must be in his mind again, automatically translating everything for Erik. “She’s my ward. I took her in when she a child.”

Erik finds himself startled. She’s been _so_ kind to him—the King’s ward? “Is your kindness the King’s kindness, then?” he asks her. “Or am I not meant to grow used to this coddling, for there will be no kindness in your dungeons?”

“We wouldn’t throw you in the dungeons,” Jean says, appalled. “For one thing, you’re a prince—for another, you’re an omega.” Erik frowns, not quite sure what she means; she says nothing more, content that she has explained it all to him. 

Charles sees through to the heart of his objection. He says, his voice more gentle than it has been, “You are safe now, Erik. You and your children both.” He reaches out, and pats Wanda’s head. She mumbles into Erik’s waist. Erik modulates his breath, in and out, steady, so as not to snatch her away, so as not to smack Charles’s hand. Charles seems to see some of his internal struggle, for he smiles and pulls back. 

The carriage bumps over the bank as it settles back on dry land. In the distance, the sun is getting low. Erik locks his eyes on Charles’s blue eyes and tries to study him, to puzzle him out, to figure out what he must do to maintain this solicitude towards him and his children.  
  
  
  
CHARLES

It is nearly nighttime when he feels a prick at the edges of his mental consciousness.

It’s not Jean; Jean would never dare, and she is dozing on his shoulder besides. He glances up from the window and meets Erik’s light, intense eyes. Another poke; a non-telepath has latched onto his telepathy, and is attempting to get his attention. Intrigued, he opens his mind to Erik. _Are you well?_

 _I wanted to know what my duties are,_ Erik thinks.

Charles raises an eyebrow. _As a hostage?_

 _In your bed,_ Erik thinks, a clear sense of rolling his eyes present even as he turns away and presses a kiss to Wanda’s forehead as she stirs awake. The mental images that cascade through Charles’s mind—not a projection of Erik’s, just his own libido and imagination—has him hungering. Erik in his bed, his hands bringing his knees up, his beautiful light eyes blown dark and heavy-lidded. Erik’s fingers grasping at the bedsheets. Erik, his head thrown back against the silk—and Erik deserves silk—the way his robe flutters over his shoulders is making Charles salivate—god. Charles jerks himself back to reality reprovingly. Erik is filled with a sort of knowing smugness.

 _I don’t expect anything from you,_ Charles tells him, and though it is true, the thing he has not said— _but I do want things from you_ —lies underneath it, rippling, dangerous.

 _Are all Westchesterians so skilled at the art of sweet lies?_ Erik thinks. His mental voice is pitched low, sultry, and Charles finds himself—oh god—struggling against the faintest hint of hardness in his trousers. His almost-daughter is resting on his shoulder right next to him, for god’s sake. _You can tell me. I’ll find out soon enough anyhow. Is it that your tastes are so depraved that you can’t speak them in public? You’d be surprised what I know about pleasing an alpha like that._

 _I’m not—_ Charles tosses a bundle of meanings and connotations at Erik— _depraved-sadistic-horrifying-like Shaw—_ an unforgivable lapse in his mental clarity, but Erik is thinking rather pointedly about the various positions that Charles might take him in, and arousal creeps down Charles’s back, sends tendrils of want through him.

Erik ignores him. _Would you have me on my back, on my knees? Would you have me warm your cock and knot as you sit on your throne and hear petitions? Would you chain me to your bed so that I could service you whenever you wanted? Would you beat me bloody and have me beg for more?_

And that—that rushes like a bucket of cold water over his head. He draws back, stricken, mortified at the way Erik can _think_ those things in the same breath, with the same thought, that he thinks of being taken by Charles, of bouncing on Charles’s cock, of moaning around his knot. He can’t. He can’t be another person who hurts Erik, who takes advantage of him—his vivid fantasies of taking Erik to bed will have to wait, perhaps forever. His sudden movement causes Jean to stir, and Pietro, who has been staring at his shoes, to look up curiously. Pietro pulls at his father’s sleeve. “Is Charles all right?” he whispers loudly.

Jean glances at Charles and turns a bright, vicious red. (Wanda, sleepy, giggles. “Papa! She looks like Azazel!” she chirps.)

“Out of our minds, Jean,” Charles says, trying to regain his composure.

“Then stop thinking lewd thoughts!” Jean snaps.

In Westchesterian, deliberately not in Erik’s mind—both to conserve some measure of privacy and because Erik’s mind is clearly a _dangerous_ place to be—he says, “I have never had an omega thinkthings like _that_ at me quite so insistently. You must grant me some patience, Jean. This is a… learning experience for us all.”

Jean frowns severely at him. She is already so protective of Erik, and Charles can hardly blame her; it was her first time seeing real cruelty. As a diplomat, she takes her role in preventing violence very seriously, but this is the first time Jean has visited a battlefield, the first war they have fought since she was a girl, the first time she had seen dying and bloody soldiers calling out for her to hold their hands… the first time she had seen a violently raped omega. Though she is some years younger than Erik, she has already taken him under her wing, and clearly views Charles as a threat to him.

“Jean,” Charles says, “I promise I will not touch him without his consent. Some of the things he showed to me… no. I will not be like that monster.”

Jean doesn’t relax, exactly, but she settles back in her seat, turns back to Erik, says something gentle and reassuring-sounding in Genoshan. Erik nods, then murmurs to his children—sweet things that they are, when they had been waiting for Erik to emerge from the medical tent and get his belongings, he had spent a good hour with them, listening to them tell him stories, and feels a sharp and painful fondness for them now (of course he does; they are Erik’s children, after all, and as extraordinary as he is)—and they obediently close their eyes. It’s still most of a full night and day to Westchester, and they’ve had a long and difficult day. The suppression collars always cause fatigue as well, and it’s good for all of them to get as much rest as possible.

“Let’s speak of something else,” he tells Jean lowly, and after a long look, she nods, and updates him on how the correspondence she’s gotten implies the castle is faring in their absence. If Charles had a consort, he wouldn’t worry so; but without anyone higher-ranking than Cain to keep him in line, every time he leaves he frets that when he get back he won’t have a castle any longer, with all the servants quitting and all the nobles fleeing. Charles gamely asks questions, jests with Jean over her network of spies, but every now and then he finds his gaze returning to Erik, who watches out the window as the twilight darkens into full night. And every time, Jean catches him, and gives him a worried, reprimanding look; until Charles begins to wonder if it’s not just Erik Jean is concerned for.  
  
  
  
JEAN

They get to Westchester without any more… _incidents._ During a break for the horses halfway to the castle, the morning after they retrieved Erik from that Genoshan hell, he sits on a stump and watches his children chase each other. “They don’t often race,” Erik tells Jean when she sits next to him. “Pietro always wins. He can’t help it.”

“At least the collars have given them this,” Jean tells him, trying to make light conversation.

Erik frowns severely at her. “Would you like to be cut off from your gift?” he asks. “To reach for it on instinct and find nothing?” Jean ducks her head and blushes hotly. Seeming to take pity on her, Erik asks her what the birds the guards have caught and roasted for them are; they’re similar to the grouse they hunt on the plains, but a different color. This is not Jean’s specialty; it is Charles’s, he enjoys reading about natural philosophy and zoology in particular, but he merely leans back and lets her speak, watching the children play, letting sunlight dart off the planes of his face.

When they arrive in Westchester, it is twilight again, and the children are flagging. Charles lets the castle know from a distance with his telepathy to make up rooms in the North Tower for their guests—Jean sends him a sharp look until he specifies the tower rooms for royal hostages, not the harem, which is also in the North Tower and has languished empty and disused since the death of Charles’s stepfather. Erik grows tense as they pass into the city, and Jean sympathizes; the bumping and jostling of the carriage on the cobbles must be making his injury flare up. She puts a hand on his arm. “Almost there,” she tells him.

When they pull into the castle courtyard, there are grooms there to help Charles down, to strip him of his armor and hand him his crutch. Jean jumps down herself, but before she can offer a hand to Erik, he’s followed her, and is gently lifting the children out of the carriage. Indecorous for an omega, but she finds that she increasingly likes that. She glances over; a page is chattering furiously to Charles, who doesn’t look happy. Cain again, then. “Jean,” he says, “will you take our guests to their rooms for the night? I’ll check in on them after I attend to this—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” she says pleasantly and lowly, so that no one can hear her treasonous words. “You will let them settle in at their own pace and absolutely not look at that poor boy with the wolves’ hunger you’ve had the whole carriage ride. The first impression Westchester makes on its guests is of paramount importance, it is my job as a diplomat and a Lady to safeguard that impression, and it absolutely does not involve _lechery_.”

Charles’s mouth twists in amusement. “Very well, Lady Grey,” he says, and kisses her hand in farewell. “I will meet them for an audience tomorrow, as is proper. Mind you take care of them.”

“I will, Charles,” she promises, for it is Charles’s kind heart speaking now, not his libido, and she can tell the difference. Charles stalks off, presumably to fix whatever Cain has broken this time, and Jean leads Erik and the children in the opposite direction, to the North Tower. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Erik gently close Pietro’s mouth as he gawps at the stonework towering above them, while sneaking furtive glances to the castle’s architectural flourishes himself. She smiles. It looks like the castle—beautiful old thing that it is—is already doing the work of creating a good impression.

The rooms she leads Erik to are plain—she will have to speak with the staff, add some more seating, ensure that Erik and his children feel comfortable here. “These are your quarters,” she says, and frowns when she realizes that there is a bedroom and a sitting area but not a second bedroom for the children. “I’ll get some cots brought up for the children… and we can clear out another suite for them. Is this all right?”

Erik is looking around, dazedly. “These are… for us?”

“Yes,” Jean says, smiling. He’s probably unused to such luxury. “The bedroom is through there—”

Erik looks at her shrewdly. “For the King’s pleasure, yes?”

Jean curses Charles and his obvious lusts. “No,” she says firmly. “As an alpha, the King should never enter your bedchamber. It would be _deeply_ inappropriate.” She tries not to think too hard about the double entendre.

“Then—I don’t understand,” Erik says, looking lost. He is holding Wanda against his shoulder; Pietro sags against his side, both of them obviously not paying attention. “I thought you would—seal us underground, away from the air and the sky—”

Jean shakes her head furiously. “Who told you that?!”

“My husband,” Erik admits.

“No,” Jean says firmly. “Absolutely not. We would never throw _any_ omega or child in the dungeon, much less a royal one. If you _weren’t_ royal you would be free right now. As it is, you will be under constant guard, but you were clearly manipulated by Shaw, and you don’t deserve cruelty in your punishment.” She reaches out, puts a hand on his free shoulder. “You are _safe_ now, Erik. Your children are safe.”

“And you won’t… hurt them?” Erik whispers.

“Never,” Jean says firmly. “The worst that could happen would be that you would indoctrinate them against Westchester, and we would take them and place them with a noble family.” Erik nods; he is clearly listening carefully, and Jean aches, wants to tell him that if he only _behaves_ , he won’t have anything to worry about. “We don’t execute children, Erik.”

And for some reason, it is _that_ of all things which causes Erik to break down. He cries silently, tears streaming down his cheeks, his breathing tightly controlled so as not to jostle his dozing children, but his face is crumpled with pain and Jean wants to reach out and hold him, comfort him, promise him that he is all right now, that he never has to be afraid again. But he is curled around his children, and she thinks that is more comfort than she could give, so instead she smiles at him and goes to check that the bed has been made up.

“I’ll see if I can bring up cots for the children now—” she tells him, but Erik shakes his head furiously.

“No, please—” he says. “They can sleep in the bed with me. I don’t mind.”

“All right,” Jean concedes, because he obviously would like to have them near. “Then I’ll leave you to rest. You’ve had a long ride from Genosha, and you’re clearly all exhausted.”

“Can you—” Erik bites off whatever he was going to say.

“You can ask me anything, Erik,” Jean tells him.

“Can you—stay?” Erik asks, his face twisted into an expression of awful hope. “Please? I would feel—it would be good, if you could stay.”

Jean smiles at him. There are guards on the door; he’s perfectly safe. But if he doesn’t _feel_ safe yet, she can care for him in this small way, lift the burden off such a strong little creature, make it so that he doesn’t have to be quite so strong. “I’ll have a cot brought up for me and I’ll sleep out here in the sitting area,” she tells him, and Erik nods, looking so grateful that it seems to have exhausted him. 

She has a servant sent down for her things, and as she dresses for bed that night, she listens to the soft sleepy sounds the children make as Erik puts them to bed. He lingers in the doorway, clearly about to drop himself, but gathers himself enough to say, “Thank you, Lady.”

“Jean,” she tells him. “Just call me Jean.”  
  
  
  
ERIK

He can’t trust them.

Westchester has been _so_ kind to him so far, but Shaw had been kind, too, when he had been just one of his father’s soldiers, and look how that had turned out. They promise that his children will be safe, that _he_ will be safe, but how long will that last? Why have they put him in this plushly decorated, spacious set of rooms, if not to demand that he do something for them? Whatever it is, he’ll do it. If it keeps his children safe, he’ll do it.

He thinks Jean is genuine, at least. The way she’d smiled at him; the way she’d blushed to see the evidence of his pain—guile has no place in her, at least not in her dealings with Erik. She is a diplomat; it is silly to believe that she is not, in fact, a master of guile. But she is straightforward and clear to Erik, and cautiously fond of the children, and he believes that she is kind enough to want him comfortable, whatever other agendas she might have.

It is the King who concerns him. The King who speaks with equal confidence about his _safety_ , about not needing to fear, but who looks at him with a predatory, hungry gaze. The King who smiles at his children’s antics, who fondly pats their heads in spite of Erik’s protective glare and bared teeth. Jean may be powerful, but what is a Lady compared to a King? Erik knows who he really must please in order to stay in this overly soft, canopied bed, his children beside him, unharmed and only a little afraid—and it’s not Jean.

He just worries about what will happen when the King grows tired of playacting at courtesy and takes what he wants—will he send the children away to have Erik all to himself? Will he—will he be as another Shaw, killing the babies Erik has borne that don’t _belong_ to him. At least the children Shaw killed were legitimate by Genoshan law. Not even Genoshan society makes room for the children of a failed marriage, the children of a widow, in the new family.

Beside him, Pietro has lain quietly—unusual for him, when he’s awake, and even in sleep he twitches and thrashes, like he’s trying to run—but now he turns into Erik’s side. “Is Father really dead?” he asks.

Erik closes his eyes. Relief washes over him again. If nothing else, Westchester has given him this. “Yes,” he says.

At his other side, Wanda, awake as well, begins to cry. Pietro merely cuddles close as he shushes Wanda, runs fingers through her hair until she sleeps, still sniffling in her dreams.

After a while, Pietro asks, hushed, so as not to wake Wanda, “Does this mean he won’t hurt you anymore?”

Erik doesn’t speak. Can’t speak. He never wanted his children to be privy to the abuse, to the pain, to the hurt. He just strokes Pietro’s hair until he, too, starts to snore and twist restlessly in his dreams, and merely stares at the dark ceiling and tries to think about neither the future nor the past, but merely the now, in a soft (too-soft) bed with his children beside him, _safe._ Safe.


	9. II: the nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: references to rape, physical abuse.
> 
> Title from "Try to praise the mutilated world," by Adam Zagajewski.

JEAN

The role of a diplomat is usurped, after a war, by generals. As Raven brokers peace with Genosha in the King’s stead with now-Chieftain Frost, Jean’s duties instead revolve around the omega in the North Tower, and ensuring that if he is ever returned to Genosha, he thinks kindly of Westchester. It is work she is happy to do.

The day after he arrives, Jean flits about the castle, attending to the little necessities of life in Westchester; making sure that Erik and the children have a wardrobe befitting their station, arranging the delivery of meals to him three times a day, ensuring that only beta guards will be assigned to his rooms. She gets Kitty assigned to be their servant, hoping another omega will put at him at ease, and convinces her throughout the day to smuggle small little luxuries to Erik—a new, thick blanket, a platter of sweets. Cain has caused a particular mess, so Charles doesn’t make good on his—promise? threat?—to have an audience with Erik until the day after.

Jean watches like a hawk as Charles paces around their chambers as Erik sits and dandles Pietro off his knee, with Wanda following Charles and chattering. Erik watches her carefully as well, but Charles seems amused and genial, and spends more attention speaking to Wanda about the food in Westchester and reassuring her that yes, they’re really going to stay here, in this _castle,_ than in forcing his lusts upon Erik. He does compliment the shade of Erik’s eyes in the red silk tunic Jean had helped him into that morning, but at a glare from Jean he desists. He leaves soon enough, snatching only a kiss of Erik’s hand, nothing more harmful.

Erik seems baffled at the courtesy, but relieved when Charles leaves. He sets Pietro down and lets his children climb under the table to play with their dolls, giggling about using a bedsheet to make up a tent. Jean sits across from him until Erik looks at her; she smiles at him.

“You’re in my care now,” she says. “You can’t leave your quarters, but I’d hardly leave you alone to languish here.”

“I have my children,” Erik says quietly. “That’s enough.”

“But surely there are moments when they are occupied with each other that you could do something else?” Jean coaxes. “Would you like me to hire…” she frowns when she realizes she doesn’t know the Genoshan word for _tutors._ She says it in Westchesterian instead, “… _tutors_ for them?”

Erik frowns. “Tutors?”

“Someone to teach them,” Jean clarifies.

His frown deepens. “I can teach them.”

“I’m sure you can, but—didn’t you have tutors growing up?” Jean’s tutors taught her arts and poetry and maths and household management, and tried to teach her embroidery and the feminine arts but it didn’t stick and she was always more interested in languages anyway, and she saw Charles once a week growing up for supper, and that was the highlight of her week. Westchester had only begun educating omegas decades ago, she realizes. How much farther behind would Genosha be? “To teach you how to read, at least?”

“My mother taught me everything,” Erik says. “My older siblings helped.”

Oh, the poor thing. He wasn’t educated at _all,_ only indoctrinated into accepting a life of abuse. Jean takes his hand; he glances down, surprised. “What did they teach you?” she asks, trying to sound encouraging.

Erik shrugs. “How to read and write,” he says, surprising her. “Sums and figures. How to pray. How to fight.”

“Your… mother taught you how to fight?”

Erik nods, like this is completely normal. Jean’s heart _cracks_ in her chest. The poor woman—of course, growing up in Genoshan society as she had, she must have known what was in store for her son, the abuse, the violence, the rape. She must have been so _frightened_ for him. She had taught him how to defend himself, for all the good it had done him—though he had protected his children with those skills, and she admires that, doubts she could’ve done it, for all that Raven had taught her basic self-defense skills as a child. Well. He won’t need those skills now, she vows.

“Would you like to learn Westchesterian?” she asks. Erik looks startled. “I can teach you to speak it as well as write it.”

“I… do you think I will be alive long enough to use it?”

Of course, in a world without proper medicine, a wound like his might well have been fatal. “Your injuries will heal,” she reassures him. How frightened he must have been, with his mate trying to kill him because they were losing a war. Hank, though, had patched up severe injuries from childbirth and battle alike; she had full confidence that he would recover.

Erik looks dubious, but then he glances at the children; Pietro had just shrieked as Wanda snatched away his doll—Erik reprimands them so quickly that Jean almost can’t translate in her head. “Can Pietro and Wanda learn as well?”

“That’s a good idea,” Jean admits. It might be a long, long time before the children return to Genosha. Of course they wouldn’t keep them locked up forever, but it’s a very real possibility that General Frost—Chieftain Frost, she reminds herself—would make the peace conditional on Erik’s and his children’s exile. Of course, if Frost fails to keep to the treaties naming Genosha a vassal state of Westchester, it would be good to have the rightful heirs of Genosha in reserve; perhaps they would marry Wanda or Pietro to a Westchesterian noble, ensure that Westchester would have control of the plains for generations to come. 

So she starts teaching the Prince of Genosha and his children Westchesterian.

Wanda and Pietro learn for an hour and a half every day, and then are sent off to play; Erik learns for an hour and a half more. He’s a swift learner; Jean knows that if he’d grown up in Westchester, he would’ve been something special, and not just because his looks had caught the attention of the King. She often asks, in slow, careful Westchesterian, “Is there anything you would like me to get for you?” and rewards Erik by fulfilling his request, whether he manages to get the words out right or not—which he usually does. He only asks for things for the children. Warmer clothing, which Jean hastens to get when she notices that the children sometimes shiver. Blankets, to make up a nest; it’s important for omega children to practice nesting, so that they know how to do it when their heat comes and while they’re too young to be mated. Jean continues to arrange for extra gifts for Erik. He picks at sweets, but smiles at the large illustrated book of stories that she has sent up to him, paging carefully through the pictures, setting the book gently, like a fragile bird, on an empty shelf.

It would be perfect. If not for Charles.  
  
  
  
ERIK

Westchester is… strange.

He thinks he would likely find it more claustrophobic if he had not, in essence, been kept as a prisoner for years. He had been allowed out of the tent to help the daily workings of the encampment, but he had not been allowed to ride for leisure, to hunt, to battle. Jean arranges for them to be moved to a bigger suite soon, with an additional bedroom with two small beds inside, but this room goes largely unused; the children relish sleeping in his bed. They all slept in the same room in the tent, but the children were never allowed to crawl into bed with them, even when they had nightmares, and are taking advantage of Shaw’s absence now. He cuddles them, perhaps excessively, and they tell him stories about things he knows full well because he was there to experience them: making friends with Kitty who brings up their meals, getting a tour of the castle with Jean (who offered to let Erik ride along in her mind, which was how Erik discovered that she was a telepath as well). They fall asleep midsentence and he just smooths their hair and kisses their foreheads, overwhelmed with love for them.

Erik’s sleep is not so easy. He has nightmares, sometimes of that final time with Shaw, but more often, that the door will swing open and it will not be Jean or the King but Shaw, having slaughtered everyone in his path, coming to take revenge on him for betraying Genosha and not dying with his mate. He’s glad that when he has these nightmares he doesn’t cry out in his sleep, although he screams plenty in his dreams; he wakes up with his whole body clenched like a fist, and can only calm down by listening to Pietro and Wanda’s quiet breaths. There is no rising from the dead, he knows, but it doesn’t calm him about the fact that if Shaw _could,_ he… he would make Erik regret living.

Some things about Westchester are comprehensible. He understands that he’s a prisoner of war. That’s a status that makes sense to him.

And some things about Westchester… are not. Like the King.

Oh, the heat in the King’s eyes when he looks at Erik is hardly extraordinary. But Erik, who is used to Shaw’s violence, can’t quite wrap his head around the way Charles… is different, doesn’t act on his ardor. Instead, he seems to be… _wooing_ Erik, almost. He visits him often, with Jean hanging around the edges and slowly relaxing as he does nothing but talk to Erik—and the children, but mostly Erik. He brings little trinkets for Erik: a gold hairpin sparkling with sapphires here, a game with a heavy stone board and heavy stone pieces that he teaches Erik to play there. Sometimes he dismisses Jean, and Erik braces himself—but Charles never uses him in those moments, just stares at him like he’s drinking him down, looking his fill. Erik has no doubt that the picture he paints will show up in the King’s nightly imaginings, but he still can’t wrap his mind around why the King doesn’t simply order Erik to his bed.

Sometimes they have dinner, which Kitty spreads out on the table in the sitting area. Erik spends most of these occasions chasing after Pietro and Wanda, wiping Pietro’s most recent stickiness ( _how?_ ) off of his face, coaxing Wanda to eat these new, strange foods. The first time, Charles tries to cut his meat for him, and Erik looks at him with such skepticism that Charles laughs and lets Erik at the dull, slight knife that is the only knife he is allowed in Westchester. Another night, Charles asks, “How are you finding Westchester? Has the hospitality been to your liking?” 

“For a prison, you mean?” Erik asks.

Charles smiles. Even when Erik is abrasive, even when Erik dares things that would get him beaten or sent for a night with Creed when he was with Shaw, Charles only smiles. “Yes, for a prison, I suppose.”

“It’s very nice,” Erik says. “Certainly it is a novel way to keep prisoners from seeing the sunlight and breathing fresh air like a person should, to lock them _up_ out of the way instead of _down._ ” Luckily, the children don’t seem to mind it. Jean has told him that _they_ are not prisoners, but because _he_ is, they are as bound to him as he insists they are. They could go outside, if he were willing to let them out of his sight, and one day Erik will let Jean take them. One day. His own fear that he might never see them again is surely less important than letting them cling to some vestiges of freedom.

Charles’s eyes alight on the illustrated book that Jean gave him. His eyes light up. “Have you been reading?”

“Papa shows us the pictures and tells us stories,” Pietro pipes up. He’s still wary of Charles, unlike Wanda, who giggles happily and clings to Charles’s good leg as he goes past because she likes him so, but even he is warming to Charles.

“Oh, really?” Charles says. “Which one is your favorite?”

“The one about the Night Riders!” Pietro says immediately.

Charles’s brow furrows. “I don’t think I know that one.”

Before Erik can explain that since he can’t read the words, he makes up stories for the children based on the pictures alone, Pietro has darted over to the book on the shelf—how is he _so_ fast, even suppressed—and gotten it down to show Charles. He flips through the book with childish eagerness— “Pietro, no—” Erik tries to say, mindful of how fragile the paper pages are compared to the vellum scrolls he’s used to—

—but it’s too late. Pietro’s fingers catch on a page and rip it. At once, Erik is out of his seat, curled around Pietro, lifting the book from his grip and squeezing his hand when it looks like he’s about to cry. “It was an accident,” Pietro mumbles, and Erik sighs, “I know, I know, my little hummingbird,” and then he turns to face Charles with defiance. If someone must be punished, let it be him.

“He didn’t mean it,” Erik says sharply. “Beat me if you must, but he’s too small to be punished over this.”

“ _Beat_ you—” Charles sputters, then closes his eyes and breathes slowly, as though he’s calming himself. Erik watches him warily. Charles is a telepath—it’s the only reason they can even speak well enough to have these dinners—and if he wanted to freeze Erik and snatch Pietro from his arms, there would be nothing he could do. But Charles smiles tremulously when he opens his eyes, and beckons for the book. “May I?”

Erik passes him the book, now with the page hanging half out of it, feeling relieved. If he’s only going to take the book, that’s fine. But Charles flips open to a page with no pictures and, with a swift, exact motion, rips it out. Pietro gasps. Erik—

Erik is confused.

With economical, small motions, Charles fiddles with the page, and in a moment a paper bird is rising from his hand. He holds it out to Pietro—careful not to grab for him, not with the way Erik is still clutching him—and Pietro tries to squirm out from Erik’s hold to take it. “It’s of no importance,” he says. “I have two more copies of that book in my library.” Erik loosens his grip on Pietro, just a little, and at once Pietro snatches at the bird, then runs over to Wanda to show it to her. Wanda giggles and holds it in her hand like a real bird, like something precious that can be broken. Charles watches them with fondness.

Erik swallows. It looks like they won’t suffer for Pietro’s carelessness today.

“Will you tell me the story you told them?” Charles asks Erik. “About the Night Riders? I’ve read that book many times, and I’ve never heard of such a tale.”

Erik rises slowly and returns to his meal. It’s a strange, tender steak that hasn’t been cooked through all the way that Charles cuts into small pieces and takes dainty bites of. Erik copies him, then says, “I can’t read the words, so I tell them new stories.”

“I know,” Charles says kindly. “That’s why I took out a page without pictures. I didn’t want to ruin your enjoyment of the book.”

Erik, haltingly, slowly, tells the story he’d made up about the warriors who died in their sleep who patrol the dreams of children, on their steeds of tamed nightmares. He has to explain the pun to Charles— _mares_ and _nightmares_ , but when he does, Charles laughs delightedly. “That’s quite clever,” he says. “I _knew_ you were clever.”

And what is _that_ supposed to mean? Erik elects to ignore him and prod Wanda to eat more of the strange bloody steak. When they finish, Charles calls Kitty in, and she arrives bearing small fresh tarts with fruit arranged neatly on the sides. Charles takes one, and then nods to let Kitty serve Erik and the children. Erik tries not to make a face at the cloying sweetness of it, but the children adore it. Charles watches them carefully, barely attending to his own dessert, smiling when Pietro begins to lick at his fingers.

That evening, Charles stays until Erik has soothed Pietro and Wanda to sleep, for the stories he tells them, but then kisses his hand, as though Erik is a beautiful virgin he would like to make his consort, and departs. Erik is left to get into bed unmolested, more unnerved by his ability to do so every day, as the heat in Charles’s eyes only increases. 


	10. II: i dare not sing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: rape (by a villainous character), brief victim-blaming.
> 
> Title from "In the Middle of the Burning" by Canisia Lubrin.

ERIK

One day, about a fortnight into his stay, Jean doesn’t come to give him lessons. Instead, someone else comes to the door in her place.

Erik hears the commotion first. He’s kneeling down with the children, holding Garur and making him dance, while Wanda and Pietro giggle, when he hears the sound of raised voices outside. He stops to listen, though it’s futile—it’s all in Westchesterian, and without Charles or Jean to translate for him, his facility with the language is still halting and garbled. He gives the doll back to Wanda and crawls out from under the table that has swiftly become the children’s favorite place to play, and the door swings open and a man he’s never seen before, a large, thickset man with dark eyes and cold satisfaction on his face, looms in the doorway. Not as big as Creed, but no one is as big as Creed; he’s still bigger and broader than Erik. He glances down at where Erik is on the floor and his sneer becomes more pronounced.

Erik glances at the door. The guards have gone. Foreboding fills him.

Is this to be his new jailer, then? He eyes Erik with the same covetous eyes as Shaw, as—as Charles, though it hurts to think of him in the same breath as his husband and this man. He says a few short, clipped sentences in Westchesterian and then reaches for the buckle of his trousers.

Erik’s stomach drops. He should’ve known better than to trust Jean’s reassurances, Charles’s sweet words—he’s not even surprised, not really. He holds up placating hands and draws out Pietro and Wanda from under the table. “Play in your room, all right?” he asks softly. They’re staring at the man. Wanda clings to his tunic, he gives her a little nudge toward the room that goes mainly unused. “Go on. I’ll be back to get you in a little bit, and then we can keep playing, yes?”

Pietro has to tow Wanda away; Erik feels a twinge of remorse. Wanda is sensitive, and must be picking up on his fear, his dismay. But he watches them safely retreat into their room and feels a wave of relief crash over him. At least this man isn’t interested in hurting his children. He just wants Erik to service him, which is fine. He turns back to the man, who is waiting impatiently, his cock out; Erik goes to rise, but the man points to the floor, and Erik gets the picture. He crawls to him instead. Shaw liked to make Erik crawl as well. It seems that some perversities cross national boundaries. The man’s face twists in satisfaction.

Erik nuzzles at his cock, his hands working at the base of it where the knot would swell. He hopes the man will be satisfied with Erik’s mouth; he’s healed from what Shaw did to him, but only just. He lets his tongue flick out, the way Shaw liked, and then sucks the head of the man’s cock into his mouth. The salt-sweat taste of him lingers only for a moment before the man thrusts deeply into his throat and he gags. The man fists his hair and holds him there, choking on his cock, until he draws back and rubs the head of his cock, spurting dribs of white fluid, over Erik’s red and swollen lips. Erik knows this type of man. It will be a long ordeal, satisfying him.

He sighs inwardly and opens his mouth obediently. The sooner he can get him to climax, the better.  
  
  
  
CHARLES

Charles has greeted the triumphant return of Scott, Raven, and Ororo to cheering crowds and is meeting with them in his private study when he first realizes something isn’t right.

Logan will likely be with the Genoshans for several more weeks, but the bulk of the process of imprisoning gifted Genoshan warriors, stripping them of their weapons, demanding tribute in horses and consolidating Chieftain Frost’s power has been accomplished. Raven, the most trusted of his generals and advisers, is recounting the process of identifying which Genoshan warriors would pose a significant threat when Charles spies a little silver head peeking around the corner of his half-closed door.

“Pietro?” he blurts out, interrupting Raven. Pietro skulks forward into the light, his hair disheveled, tears red and shiny in his eyes. At once, Charles is out of his seat. He hesitates before scooping Pietro up, aware that Erik is still skittish when he reaches out to ruffle his or Wanda’s hair, or pat their shoulders. Instead he kneels, ignoring the protests of his bad leg, and says, “What are you doing here?” The children are technically allowed free reign of the castle, but they’re not quite old enough to go roving about unsupervised, so they’re effectively confined to Erik’s quarters as much as Erik is.

(”Is that a child?” Raven mutters behind him, baffled. Scott explains to her in quiet tones; no doubt Jean has filled him in on how much affection Charles has found within himself for Pietro and Wanda in her letters.)

“You said we were safe,” Pietro mumbles.

A chill shudders down Charles’s spine. “You are,” he promises. “What’s happened.”

Pietro looks at him tearfully, shaking his head, and Charles dives into his mind. What he sees there sickens him. He swears—a word he is glad Pietro doesn’t understand—and rises, snapping, “Come with me,” to his generals. Without thinking any further about it, he sweeps Pietro up into his arms, and the boy clings to him, hot tears leaking into Charles’s tunic.

By the time Charles gets to Erik’s chambers, his fiercest warriors behind him, Cain has his cock down Erik’s throat.

Fury and horror pulse through him like a heartbeat. He slams the half-cracked door fully open—Erik, startled, lets Cain’s cock fall from his mouth—and Cain has the _gall_ to grin lazily at him. “Here to take your turn, Charles?” Cain says, his face flushed with arousal. He pats Erik’s cheek roughly, condescendingly, and Charles sees _red_. 

_Get him_ out _of here,_ he says into Ororo and Scott’s minds. Raven, bless her, knows what he wants instinctively, and she’s already crossing the room to lay a heavy hand on Cain’s shoulder and yank him backward. Cain’s lazy pleasure transforms into outrage. “What—get your hands off me!” Cain shouts. “I am a Prince—”

“And by order of the King, we are escorting you out of here,” Raven says flatly. Scott takes his other arm; Ororo’s hands crackle with deadly intent. Cain growls but Charles must look even more mad with rage than he expects, for Cain takes one look at him and his face rearranges into smooth ingratiation. “Why, you only had to tell me that you wanted him for yourself,” he says. “I would’ve respected that—but you locked him away up here, I thought he was like any other prisoner—”

“Have you been doing this to _others?”_ Charles snaps.

Cain shuts up, having realized he has backed himself into a hole. “Get him _out_ of here!” Charles shouts. In his arms, Pietro whimpers.

Erik is tugging his the fabric of his tunic up over his bared shoulder; Cain had undone it partly and pulled it down, baring one pert nipple to the air. He looks at Pietro with a mix of fondness and worry, but Charles barely registers it. He sets Pietro down, only to grab Erik by the collar and snarl, both out loud and in Erik’s mind, “And you! You’ll get down on your knees for an alpha even with your _children_ present—?”

Erik flinches.

At once, Charles’s anger—drains away. He’d blamed Erik, for a split second, but now he can see clearly that Erik had assumed he couldn’t say no, that his status here was dependent on servicing—whoever had the power to come into his rooms and dismiss his guards. In desperation, Charles dives deeply into Erik’s mind, ignoring his cry of pain, shifting through his memories, searching for whether anything like this has happened before—

 _“You’re pretty enough,”_ Cain had said. “ _Is it true what they say about the Genoshans in bed, that you’re good enough an alpha will ignore the looseness of your hole?”—_

—he only registers Erik’s terror and agony once he realizes that this is the only time and calm reasserts itself, and draws back, horrified at himself. Erik is clutching at his head, almost doubled over in pain from Charles’s rough use of telepathy, and without thinking Charles rushes to him and puts his arms around him, holding him, gently using his telepathy to massage the pain away, coupled with fingers stroking through his hair to put him physically at ease. Erik—Erik nervously cuddles back, and Charles can feel his uncertainty of whether he’s in trouble or not.

“I thought he had your permission,” Erik whispered, and Charles realizes that he thinks he’s been punished. Charles holds him tighter, lost for words. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t know that he didn’t have your permission.”

Of course that’s what he thought—he was under guard, and Cain had sent his guards away. Of course he’d assented.

Charles swallows. There’s a wealth of things he needs to say— _I wasn’t mad at you,_ which is a lie but something that should’ve been true; _I’m sorry for hurting you_ , which is true but also difficult to admit; _don’t ever do that again,_ which would be too harsh for an omega in such a fragile state but which is the most important thing to him right now. Instead he says, “He didn’t. No one will _ever_ have permission, Erik. We don’t do that with prisoners of war here.”

 _But clearly you do,_ Erik thinks loudly enough for Charles to catch it, though he doesn’t think Erik is projecting deliberately.

Charles shakes his head in denial. “We don’t,” he insists.

This time Erik turns to him and says in his mind, clearly and deliberately—it is perhaps easier to disagree with the man who holds his life in his hands mentally, and Charles will accept whatever makes him less frightened— _That man—whoever he was—he felt he was entitled to my body. The only thing that stopped him is that you want me for yourself._

 _I didn’t know,_ Charles tells him. _I didn’t know this was going on. I’ll put a stop to it at once._ Erik smiles a little coldly, and Charles can tell he doesn’t believe him—hopefully when no one ever enters his quarters with ill intent again, he’ll find it easier to believe—fury spikes through Charles again when he sees how resigned to what he believes is his fate Erik is. An omega as brilliant and alive as Erik, thinking he’s confined to life as a womb and a cunt. Horror still simmers under his skin, that Cain took advantage of Erik’s fear for himself and for his children. 

Erik pulls back from Charles’s embrace; Charles lets him go, slowly, loathe as he is to part from him—but steps back when Erik opens his arms and Pietro rushes into them. Erik scolds him in soft Genoshan, but presses contradictory kisses to his forehead in thanks that Pietro snuck out and alerted Charles to his plight. Charles watches, knowing that he should go deal with Cain, but wanting to store up this moment of gentleness, of Erik soft and parental with his child, to give him strength during the ordeal of trying to figure out how to make sure Cain never does anything like this again. At last, Erik looks at him, uncertainty in his eyes. Charles tries to smile at him, to encourage him to ask what he clearly wants to ask.

Erik opens his mouth to speak, then glances at Pietro, cuddling close to him, and thinks better of it. _My husband used his generals’ interest in me as a threat to keep me in line,_ Erik thinks, and Charles can barely process the horror of that before Erik continues. _Are you doing the same, King of Westchester? If I step out of line, can I expect to find myself in that man’s bed?_

“No!” Charles blurts out, startling Pietro and Erik and himself. He takes a deep breath and composes himself. _No, Erik,_ he thinks, as firmly and fiercely as he can. _This was a—regrettable aberration. But you will be safe here, whether you… whether you reciprocate my interests or not._

Erik gives him a doubtful smile, but does not seem interested in arguing. As he leaves to attend to Cain, Charles wonders what it will take for Erik to trust in him—how much _more_ it will take for Erik to trust in him now—and whether he can wait that long when his soul languishes for Erik’s touch, for Erik’s smiles, for Erik.


	11. II: you are still summer, still the high familiar endless summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: aftermath of rape.
> 
> Title from "To the Light of September" by W.S. Merwin.

JEAN

The moment Jean hears of what happened with Cain, she blames herself.

If only she hadn’t left Erik alone to arrange the welcome for the generals—if only she’d given more explicit instructions to the guard—but she hadn’t expected even Cain, known for his lechery and disregard for decorum as he is, to try to coerce a prince, even a captive one, into sex. Charles summons her to tell her what happened, and though she knows _he_ doesn’t blame her for failing to safeguard the omega he… cares for, she worries Erik might. She rushes up to Erik’s tower then dawdles outside, not sure if he’ll want space to—weep, perhaps, or simply curl up with his children and hold them to him tightly. Finally, she opens the door and is greeted to the sight of Erik curled up on one of the chaises with Pietro under one arm and Wanda under the other, the storybook open on his lap, and him weaving a fantastical tale that has nearly no relation to the story whose illustrations he is using as a jumping-off point.

“Erik?” she asks hesitantly.

Erik glances up at her and swiftly wraps up his story. Jean feels bad—another thing she has to feel bad about—but is too anxious to truly regret it. Erik leaves the children to play, then goes to Jean. “Are you here for our lessons?” he asks, as though nothing had happened at all. That can’t be healthy. 

“Are you all right?” Jean asks. “I know you’re not all right—but—do you need anything?”

Erik shakes his head, looking puzzled. “We’re fine,” he says. “Perhaps Wanda could use new shoes—these floors are very cold.”

Jean makes a note of it, but struggles to articulate what she expects Erik to say. She wants to put his arms around him, but maybe he doesn’t want that? He’s just been… _touched,_ after all. “I heard about what happened with Prince Cain,” she tells him. “I’m so sorry, Erik—you should have been safe here—the guardsmen have new instructions, so as not to let anyone in without mine or the King’s express permission—” and if she could narrow that order down to just _her_ permission, she would.

Erik doesn’t seem perturbed. “All right,” he says. “Have you come to have supper with us?”

So Jean eats with them, watching Erik like a hawk, but he doesn’t seem to have even _noticed_ that he was… molested today. Jean comes to a horrifying conclusion: that the poor thing is so used to being only used for sex that he’s come to expect it, even here, in a civilized country. She decides not to bring it up if Erik doesn’t want to bring it up—perhaps it’s a defense mechanism?—but doubles her resolve to keep the poor omega safe. 

Instead, she continues introducing Erik to the peculiarities of Westchesterian culture. She realizes that he doesn’t eat oranges not because he doesn’t like them, but because he doesn’t know how to peel them. They’re imported from the more temperate Carnelia; but of course Erik would’ve only eaten what the Genoshans could hunt and scavenge, would be a stranger to commerce and trade. The children are immediately delighted by the sweet tartness of an orange; Erik doesn’t seem to like the stickiness of it. She goes on introducing Erik to different foods—the varieties of berries they have, the root vegetables that Erik seems unfamiliar with—he eats with slow, considering bites that she finds… sort of adorable. Increasingly, she takes her lunches with Erik after their lessons, and sometimes suppers if she has to chaperone Charles. 

One lesson, after she has taught him the way the Westchesterian letters look on the page, she has an idea. “I can have some paper brought in if you want to keep a diary,” she says. Journaling is a perfectly respectable activity for omegas. Erik hesitates at the thought. “Charles won’t read it,” she encourages, “and I’ll only report it if I think you’re a danger to someone.” The thought is almost absurd—anyone who’s seen Erik snuggling with his children might think that he’s the classic omega caretaker—but Jean still remembers the bodies littering Erik’s tent.

So Erik starts keeping a diary, which is more sketches than words; Erik draws in the hyper-realistic Genoshan style, instead of the stylized figures which are fashionable in Westchester now. Jean sometimes asks for stories about the figures he draws, but Erik always refuses her. Some wounds, she supposes, are too raw.

She shows him how to dress himself—he has trouble with the latches—and begins to take him and the children out for escorted walks throughout the castle. The children make friends easily; the servants all dote on the little barbarians who are so shy at first, and soon the children are brimming over with stories about Bobby in the kitchens and Scott who lets them climb on his arms. Erik watches them anxiously, but eventually unbends enough to have conversations with Jean while the children play. They speak about the differences between Westchester and Genosha, steering clear of any taboo or touchy subjects, like Erik’s abuse, like sexuality. Jean tells Erik about growing up, first with her family, what little she can remember of them, and then as Charles’s ward; Erik has yet to tell her about his own parents and siblings, but she catches glimpses of them sometimes in his diary. They talk about the children, how they’re growing, and Erik shares little stories about them from their toddlerhood.

Jean takes care of him. Jean protects him. Jean will make sure that nothing like Cain ever happens again.  
  
  
  
ERIK

After the incident, Erik is braced for the worst, but the worst never arrives.

Shaw killed his family and his children, but he was his _mate_ and the father of his survivors and wouldn’t… wouldn’t hurt him any more than strictly necessary. And now he’s a prisoner of war, and the King shows an alarming interest in him, and this time his children don’t even have the safety of being the King’s own. So Erik can hardly be blamed for the way he stiffens, the way every breath catches in his throat, when he comes across Charles bending down and giving Pietro a sweet treat (he is still shyer than his sister), or the twins little trinkets like the paper bird he had folded. He can’t be blamed for being jumpy about the fact that they’re not Charles’s children, and Charles is not subtle about finding Erik attractive.

Charles is—kind. So far, he’s been lovely and kind and—and everything Shaw wasn’t, but Shaw made it clear that he might kill his own children, and Charles has no reason to spare them except keeping them as future bargaining chips with other nations. Quietly, Erik investigates how he might make arrangements for the children if Charles wants them out of his way. He doesn’t want to hand them over, but he will if it keeps them alive—the servants give large, genuine smiles when they see Pietro and Wanda, and Jean is gentle and encouraging toward them, so they’ll probably be treated at least tolerably, if not well.

Jean had said that they’d only take away the children if he indoctrinated them, but one afternoon, as Jean shows him how to take tea (and why show him all these courtly things, if not to use them as a concubine?), he asks, “If you had to take the children away, would I still get to see them?”

Jean spills a little puddle of tea over her hand and hisses. Erik realizes that he wasn’t as discreet as he should’ve been when, from across the room, Pietro drops his doll; Wanda is already crying. He goes to them and hushes them, but keeps his eyes on Jean; he shouldn’t have brought this up in front of the children, but it had just burst out of him, and he needs to know. He needs to know whether he would see his precious darlings, or if his life is meant to be lonely, cold, locked away in a tower for the King’s pleasure.

“Why in the name of god would we do that?” Jean asks, dabbing at her hand and trying resolutely to ignore the children’s inconsolable wailing. “We—look at them, Erik, they clearly adore you. Taking them from you would just be cruel.”

“We don’t want to leave,” Pietro whimpers, and Erik sighs and brushes his hair back from his forehead and kisses Wanda’s crown as she sniffles into his shoulder. “Please, Papa, don’t make us leave.”

“I’d never _make_ you leave,” Erik says. It is important for them to understand this difference. To know that their Papa fought for them, that their lives were the great battle of their Papa’s existence. “But—”

“But nothing,” Jean says firmly. “We’d only ever take them as a last resort.”

“And the King?” Erik asks quietly, even as the sniffles and tears die down.

“What about him?” Jean says with studied nonchalance, as though she’s determined to pretend that Charles is not a threat to him or his children. 

“If he wanted to send them away,” Erik says, haltingly—

Jean sets her cup down with force. “Charles would never separate an omega from their children,” she says with finality, and Erik can’t be sure if the force of her statement is because she’s determined for him to think of Westchester and their King as good to Genosha’s evil, or if it’s an attempt to will this state of affairs into being, because she’s not sure herself. Either way, he recognizes that he’s not going to get anything more out of her, so he desists, turning back to whisper soothing words to Pietro and Wanda— _It’s all right, you’re not going anywhere_ —though he doesn’t know yet if they are lies.  
  
  
  
CHARLES

After Cain, Charles backs off a little. He doesn’t want Erik to think of Charles’s advances and Cain’s _presumption_ together, couldn’t bear to be lumped together with his rapist of a stepbrother. He keeps his visits brief, focuses on ingratiating himself to Pietro and Wanda—which isn’t difficult, they’re as delightful as Raven’s children, and a good deal wilder and more entertaining. But like a lodestone, he is drawn back to Erik. When he goes days without seeing him, he dreams of Erik—not just the lustful dreams either—he dreams of Erik watching him warily as he paces around his chambers on one of his visits as Pietro and Wanda follow him, those light, intense eyes bright against the lamplight. He dreams of Erik with his teeth bared and blood on his hands, the first time he saw him. He dreams of Erik’s smile, soft-edged and warm, and what it might feel like to have that smile leveled at _him._

He finds himself drifting towards Erik’s tower. There’s so much he wants to show him about Westchester; he is so anxious to have Erik feel like he’s home, though he knows that some part of him will always long for the plains and sky of Genosha. He starts taking supper with Erik again, and then goes a step farther and starts arranging his meals himself, usually the roasts Erik likes along with a few Westchesterian delicacies that he’s eager to see Erik acquaint himself with. He takes to accompanying Kitty with the supper tray, his own relatively plain meal balanced in her other hand, and watching, enthralled, as Erik tastes his way through the spread Charles has prepared for him. He asks Erik what he liked to eat in Genosha, listens avidly to Erik’s halting explanation that the variety was nothing so great as in Westchester, which trades extensively with its neighboring nations. That he was used to eating meat roasted on a spit and whatever was in season on the branches and brambles of the plains.

Charles introduces him to rich Carnelian stews and candied ginger and almonds, to the four-course meals of feast days and simple grain-based peasant’s fare that Erik is cautiously intrigued by. He learns that Erik likes to eat roast fowl because he likes wing-flesh, and finds it unaccountably charming. He discovers that what Erik likes is what he tends to give to the children; Erik’s expression when he shows up with a platter full of roast fowl, more poultry wings than the children could fit into their mouths, is to be appreciated almost as much as his expression when he is able to savor his favorite foods without feeling compelled to give them to his babies. Erik slowly gains weight, which Charles watches with satisfaction; he had been so thin, so fragile-looking, with his bird-bones and his jutting hips, and there is a peculiar kind of smugness to the knowledge that it is Charles’s coffers, Charles’s kitchen, who are fattening him up.

Sometimes Jean chaperones; sometimes he sends her away, and she goes, mulishly. He knows she has her spies among the guards and servants and so knows that Erik’s sheets remain unsullied and his honor unbesmirched. It doesn’t stop her from looking on disapprovingly when Charles compliments Erik’s beauty, which Erik takes in tired stride; Charles supposes that even a monster like Shaw must have commented on his uncommon loveliness once or twice. “Only look upon me with those jeweled eyes,” he says one night, and Wanda giggles, and he smiles at her, and Erik rolls his eyes, and Jean scowls.

Whenever he gets too obvious, as decided upon by Jean, she’s fully ready to threaten him. After that night, she corners him in his study when he retreats there after dinner—the Westchesterian soldiers will be imposing new sexual propriety laws on their vassal state of Genosha, after he saw firsthand how omegas are treated by powerful alphas there, no more orgies, no more sharing one omega among multiple alphas, no more _perversions._ She glances at the papers on his desk and nods approvingly, but then turns on Charles. “You must be careful,” she lectures.

“I am careful,” Charles protests.

“Normally I would agree, but when it comes to Erik, you are clearly the opposite,” Jean scolds. “His status—Charles, he is a prisoner of war and Shaw’s former omega. His position is already so precarious. His life depends upon your goodwill, and the lives of his children—”

“I would never—”

“ _I_ know that,” Jean says. “ _He_ doesn’t. And after what happened with Cain—”

Charles clenches his fist involuntarily and crumples the paper he was holding. He takes deep, steadying breaths and smooths it out regretfully. Jean is watching with keen eyes. “You see?” she says. “You’ve lost your head over him, Charles.”

“You can’t speak to me like that,” Charles says, a little amused, a little impressed. His child has grown up. “I’m the King.”

“You’re a man,” Jean corrects gently. “You’re an alpha. I know you want him. Everyone who has laid eyes on you together knows you want him. I am just asking you—please don’t have him. I know you’re waiting for him to want you, but… even if he comes to you, please turn him away. He is still so fragile, in mind and in body and in status. You could break him. He doesn’t know how you could break him.”

Charles knows that he could march into Erik’s rooms, fuck him, and the only potential repercussion he’d face would be Jean’s ire. He knows he doesn’t want that; he wants Erik to come to his arms willingly. He’s doubtful of Jean’s claim that even if he does, he won’t be in his right mind, but—is that because he’s being rational about this, or because… because he’s falling in love with him? Charles dismisses Jean, who huffs and turns on her heel and marches away, and Charles puts his face in his hands and tries to think without Erik’s cool, challenging eyes intruding on his mind.

Then one evening, Hank predicts a meteor shower.

Charles arranges for Kitty, whom Erik trusts, to look after the children. Erik looks at him with resignation in his eyes when he beckons for him—and Charles might guess at what he’s thinking, being summoned so late at night—but his trepidation grows to confusion as Charles leads not down to his chambers but up the tower to the roof. “I wanted to show you something,” Charles explains. Erik shivers in the cold; Charles, conciliatory, wraps him in his cloak. It’s not that cold outside for a spring night, and he can go perfectly well without it; but Erik is used to the warmer climes of Genosha, and his silks and linens are, while suited to an omega of his station, are not quite sufficient enough to keep him warm while stargazing.

When the first meteor lights up the night, Erik tips his gaze up and the sheer awe in his face makes Charles break out into a helpless, dizzy grin.

“How…” Erik breathes.

“They’re meteors,” Charles explains. “The heavens are full of small bodies that pass around the earth regularly. Our physician, Hank, has done excellent astronomical work on predicting meteor showers. You might have seen them before,” he adds a little shyly, “but I thought this might be the first time you knew to look.”

“They arrive regularly?” Erik asks. “But not regularly by any measure of our time, not every year or every month. They arrive regularly on celestial time, then.”

“Yes,” Charles says, pleased with Erik’s cleverness. “Every 400 days, for this one.”

Erik tips his face back. The moon is dull and low—perfect conditions for star-gazing—and he is difficult to see in the low light, but Charles can make out the lines of his expression, the wondering joy. “We used to say that the stars had come loose,” he says. “That the stars are yoked in place by the gods, and sometimes they escape and wander the sky.”

“We have our own legends,” Charles admits. “But the only one I can remember right now is that if you see a falling star, you close your eyes and wish on it, and it will come true.”

Erik’s lashes flutter darkly. Charles watches, captivated, as he seems to savor the night, the dim light of the moon barely illuminating his face. “What did you wish for?” he asks, hushed, like Erik’s wishes are sacred things.

Erik’s eyes open. “For the health of my children,” he says, and Charles is touched. He doesn’t wish for status, or even freedom; his every waking thought is consumed with his children. The love there is staggering. Charles glances up at the sky and wishes to find himself within the light of that love, the scope of that boundless affection and protectiveness.

They watch the stars together until for well over an hour, until Erik starts to yawn and Charles offers to return him to his chambers. He gestures for Erik to take his arm and leads them both downstairs. Erik doesn’t seem to mind how long it takes Charles to limp up and down the stairs. In Erik’s chambers, the children are asleep, curled up next to each other like a Westchesterian quotation mark, Erik smiles wryly at the two of them taking up the center of the bed, and gently lifts Pietro away so that there’s a space for himself in between his two children. Pietro murmurs in dissent and Erik hushes him.

Charles lingers in the doorway, watching Erik’s gentle hands soothe the children before he climbs into bed beside them. When Erik is settled, Charles goes and sits on the bed; Erik looks at him anxiously, but Charles rearranges the covers so they sit snugly around Erik and his children. He hesitates. Before he can think better of it, he leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to Erik’s forehead.

When he pulls back, Erik is staring at him as though trying to parse all the mysteries of the universe.

Charles remembers that look as he readies himself for bed. He thinks he would like to show Erik all the mysteries of the universe indeed.


	12. II: in the peach orchard, i prepare a séance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: memories of infanticide
> 
> Title from "Battlegrounds," by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo.

CHARLES

Erik never asks for anything, save for what his children need. A shoe for Pietro, who has somehow destroyed his; cloth to repair Wanda’s doll, as she can’t sleep without something to cuddle. Charles gives him jewels and gold and fancy clothes sometimes, but Erik never wears them, except at dinner, presumably to thank Charles—when Charles drops in on him during the day, his neck and wrists are always bare and unadorned, and he is wearing the plainer of his clothes, the ones with the easier catches and ties. So Charles is surprised when one evening, during dinner, Erik very politely requests a specific kind of Genoshan incense—ashwood incense.

Charles agrees, and arranges for a page to research and obtain a few sticks of this particular incense; it’s hardly as though Erik could burn down his chambers with a stick of incense. But he’s curious, because this is the first time, the only thing, Erik has requested that is conceivably not for his children. And so he goes to Jean.

Jean frowns and has to flip through a reference book before she finds what she is looking for. “It’s…” she pauses. “To honor the dead.” 

Charles’s stomach turns over. Surely he’s not mourning for Shaw? Shaw who abused him so—Shaw who left him bloody and half-dead in his tent, alone to protect his children from what he must have thought were rapacious invading soldiers? Fury sparks through him, but, remembering the last time he grew furious at Erik, Charles tamps it down just as quickly. Jean looks at him as though she can tell what he’s thinking—she’d never use her telepathy on him, but she knows him well. “What would you do?” he asks her, and from the way she tilts her head consideringly she understands that he’s asking her in a rare moment of weakness to consider his full situation: an alpha who might love an omega who is asking to pay respects to his abuser.

“It’s important to Genoshan culture,” she says finally. And Charles nods, takes her meaning: it’s important to _him,_ she means, it’s the first thing Erik has asked for that is just for him.

So he gets the incense, and takes it up himself when Jean is busy with her correspondence. This is one meeting he doesn’t want to have an audience for. Erik’s face lights up when he sees it, and he cradles the incense, already tucked in an elegant marble holder, close to his body. “Thank you,” he says quietly. “It’s almost the equinox, and… thank you.” Erik has never thanked him for anything in his life. The closest he got was weeping in relief when Charles told him they weren’t going to harm the children. Charles only wishes it weren’t because of this.

As the Equinox approaches, Charles spends a little less time with Erik; every time he glances at him, playing with his children, trying new foods thoughtfully, he can’t help but remember that somehow this omega’s heart belongs to another, a man who brutalized him and beat him and left him alone. But the night of the equinox, he finds himself drawn to Erik’s room. The guards open the door silently for him; it’s late, the children are likely in bed. He looks inside and sees Erik, in front of the barred window, kneeling in front of the incense holder and murmuring soft words. Charles doesn’t try to look inside of his mind to see what he’s saying; that would be. Intrusive, no matter how curious he is. Instead he merely closes the door and leans against it, watching Erik for what feels like hours as he prays, catches the glitter of tears trickling down his cheeks, and aches for him.

Finally, Erik snuffs out the incense and stands, wiping almost angrily at his face. He glances up, sees Charles, and doesn’t start, as though he’s known he was there all along. Charles’s conscience nudges at him until he says, through gritted teeth, “Would you… would it help you if…? I can take you to see where Shaw is buried.”

Because if Erik wants to mourn, fully and openly, he ought to be able to mourn the right way, mourn to the best of his abilities. But Erik only looks at him as though he’s lost his head. “Why would I want that?”

Charles frowns. “Your mourning ritual—?”

Erik’s snorts. It’s inelegant and unomegalike and Charles loves it. “I grieve for my children, King of Westchester, not my soul-stained devil of a mate.”

But—his children are _there,_ just beyond, in the bedroom, sleeping through the conversation their Papa is having with their King as moonlight cuts across the room, drawing lines between them. Charles is so used to thinking of Erik and Pietro and Wanda as a unit, a whole, complete family, that even though Erik’s meaning is obvious, it takes him a minute to understand. But when he does—

Oh, _Erik._

Starvation, perhaps. Or disease. Erik had said _children_ —he had lost at least two to deprivation, then. Charles clears his throat, says, “You won’t have to worry anymore,” though his voice is thick and unsteady, though he feels uncertain of his place now in this fragile, moon-worn moment. He is no longer the suitor of a dead man’s omega, he is the King of a grieving parent, and he regrets having intruded on this moment that was not for him, that was never meant for him, that had nothing to do with him. “Hank is an excellent doctor, and… and your children will never want for anything to eat.”

Erik takes a moment to reply. He pinches out the incense with his fingers; the dimmer light casts him briefly in shadow. Charles longs to see his face, to see relief on it or gratitude or—anything but the carefully studied blankness that greets him when Erik moves once again into the moonlight. “And if you get me with child, King of Westchester?” Erik asks eventually. Charles’s heart jumps—Erik has placed his finger on the vein of Charles’s _longing_ , not just to see Erik spread across his bed, but to see him swollen and beautiful with child—but then Erik continues, softly, devastatingly, “Will you slit my bastard’s children throats and bury them in the desert?”

It takes him a slow, sticky moment to work out Erik’s meaning, again, how he might have had not one but several illegitimate children. At once Charles remembers the pernicious rumors about Genoshan omegas, the ones that Cain had been listening to, that their alphas whore them out to anyone who wants them—but those are only rumors, he knows it—instead he thinks about learning about the marriage customs of their near neighbors, how the mate of the chieftain also mated with their most valued generals. If Erik had had children by them—

Why had he never considered this before? That Genosha condemned the chieftain’s mate to the shame of bearing perhaps obviously illegitimate children—

But that wasn’t what Erik was mourning, was it?

_My bastard children. Will you slit my bastard children’s throats—_

Oh god. Oh no.

 _“Erik,”_ Charles gasps out, and at the sound of his name, Erik crumples. Horror washes through Charles. Disgust and fury follow along in its wake, and he crosses the room and puts his arms around Erik, whose tears have morphed into soft sobs. He cradles him close, feeling utterly sick, wishing to god that he’d killed Shaw slower—how _dare_ the man play games like this with Erik—he can imagine it, forcing Erik to lie with his generals and bear illegitimate children and then _killing them_ —burying them in the desert—but Erik needs him to be strong right now, Erik needs him to be a rock. “It’s not your fault,” he tells Erik, whose stuttering breath catches on his tears as he looks at Charles with his stricken eyes. “It’s _not_ your fault. It’s the fault of that—that _monster_ —who forced you to bear illegitimate seed—”

“No,” Erik says, around his hiccuping breaths. “No, they—they were legitimate, at least in Genosha—descent is passed down through the dam.” He looks tired, having to explain this to Charles, and Charles gently steers him toward the low reclining sofa. Erik, seemingly exhausted, puts his head on Charles’s shoulder, but Charles can’t even relish the moment, there is too much pain in Erik’s voice, there is too much defeat in his words. “But if even my legitimate children were a threat to my old chieftain, what would my illegitimate children be subject to if I mated you, King of Westchester?”

For an awful moment, Charles wonders if Cain got Erik pregnant—and realizes, in spite of it, that he is fully willing to take on the child as his own even though he hates Cain more than anyone else alive—but then figures he must be speaking about Pietro and Wanda, who would, if Erik married Charles, be technically illegitimate. _“Nothing,”_ Charles swears fiercely. Erik laughs, a little bitterly.

“It’s easy to swear,” he says. “Sweet words. I have some experience with sweet words. And even so, I find myself paying respects to the souls of my other children. Thank you for your sweet words, nevertheless, King of Westchester; we had food and doctors in Genosha, but my children appreciate the reassurance.” He nuzzles at Charles’s ear. For once, Charles does not have to struggle against a shiver. “And I… I thank you for the incense. For years, I had to say my prayers for my children in secret because I wouldn’t have been allowed to light actual incense in their honor. I… I am thankful that I can give them the respect they deserve now.”

He could take him, Charles realizes right now. He could push him down on the couch and kiss him, and Erik wouldn’t resist—not that he would resist normally, not if he thought the lives of his children were in danger—but he would be even more pliant, even more deliciously sweet, now. And he doesn’t want to. He wants Erik smiling at him, he wants Erik’s fire, he doesn’t want to take advantage of Erik when he is wrecked-raw and exhausted from the ordeal of remembering. Instead he just holds him, lets Erik’s sniffles die down, lets the ghost-light of the moon creep further along the floor as the shadows shift to hold it. “Is there anything else you must do to pay your respects?” he asks eventually.

Erik shakes his head. “I’ve said the prayers… that’s enough.”

“Then let’s put you to bed with your children,” Charles says gently. “They live and breathe; they need you beside them, protecting them. As you have done so admirably so far.”

“For now they do,” Erik agrees. He allows Charles to pull him up, to put a hand on the small of his back to direct him to the bedroom.

Charles doesn’t tuck him in, the way he did that night with the meteor shower, but he watches protectively as Erik climbs in bed and holds Wanda to himself the way Wanda is holding her doll. “Erik…” he says, “they are safe now. I will keep saying so until you believe it.” Erik only looks at him. He takes a deep breath. “Sleep well, Erik Shaw.”

“And you, King of Westchester,” Erik murmurs, and closes his eyes.

It will be much later when Charles realizes that he might not have been saying _they do need me for now_ , anticipating the years that will pass too quickly before they are grown, but _they are alive for now_ , and he will ache, having promised Erik that his children are safe from him, and not sure how else to swear it in a way Erik would believe.


	13. II: the same rice for supper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: disordered eating, mentions of infanticide.
> 
> Title from "Millennium, Six Songs" by Marilyn Chin.

ERIK

The children continue to make friends. What Erik doesn’t expect is for _him_ to make friends. The King’s fourth and final general returns from Genosha; Logan escorts Jean to classes with Erik one day, but he’s… strangely solicitous to Erik. He asks him how he’s been doing (fine) and whether the King has been respectful (yes, but Erik has to wonder why everyone seems to _care_ so much).

Another day, Jean enters for their lessons with a slight frown on her face. “Is something wrong?” Erik asks.

“No,” Jean says. “At least, I don’t think so.” She makes an effort to smile at him. “General Raven’s wife sent me a cryptic message this morning, that’s all. She’s clairvoyant,” she explains.

“Ah,” Erik says. He’s never known a clairvoyant himself—it’s a rare gift—but his grandmother had one as a general, when she was chieftain, and the stories that had been passed down to him spoke of her legendary inscrutability. “I’m sure it will make sense to you eventually.”

Erik sweeps the children up and pens them in for a lesson about animal names, then lets them go as Jean teaches him how to conjugate verbs. The morning passes swiftly, and Jean is complimenting him on how quickly he’s learning Westchesterian when a puff of blue smoke appears in the middle of the room and a little blue elf-creature bounces down and stares at Pietro and Wanda.

“Kurt!” Jean snaps. “What are you doing here?!”

“Mama said there were new children and I wanted to see,” Kurt says, openly goggling at Pietro and Wanda. “Hullo!”

“Hello,” Wanda says shyly. Pietro echoes her. It’s one of the few Westchesterian words they know by heart. They edge forward, curious about this new child—they’ve seen plenty of physical mutation before, but no children since they were taken to Westchester. And Erik—

Erik is staring at the child’s tail, suddenly transported back to being in a birthing tent on his back, staring at a beautiful beta boy with a tail.

“I’m so sorry,” Jean is saying to Erik. “Irene—the clairvoyant—must have gotten distracted—normally she’s great at appearing right where Kurt is set to vanish to, the little _teleporting pest,_ ” she says, but it’s clearly fond. She stands, ready to scoop Kurt up and take him back to his mother, before Erik finds his voice.

“I—he could stay?” he says. “I could watch him. If—if his mother is busy.”

Jean hesitates. He gets the sense that normally she wouldn’t consider it at all, but that something is staying her hand. “I… that would be in line with what Irene told me this morning,” she said ruefully.

“What did she say?”

“She said ‘let him stay, it’ll be good for him.’” Jean glances over at Kurt, says something rolling and sweet to him in Westchesterian, and Kurt squeals with joy. Erik comes to sit on the low sofa, closer to where the children have started to snatch at each other, in the way of children. Kurt is a little older than Pietro and Wanda, a little taller and sturdier, but he is careful when he pulls at them. Erik watches, transfixed. “How—how do I tell him I like his tail?” he asks Jean, an unsteady hitch in his voice that he hopes she doesn’t notice.

She smiles at him, repeats the words in Westchesterian for Kurt. Kurt bashfully holds up his tail and tries to hide his face behind it. Erik wipes at his eyes, wondering whether the clairvoyant’s words meant that Kurt’s presence would be good for Kurt, or for Erik—and lets the children play.

After that, Kurt _bamf_ s into their room relatively often, sometimes to play with Pietro and Wanda, but sometimes just to get cuddles from Erik, who he insists gives wonderful cuddles. Sometimes he brings his sister, wrapped in a blanket, as her gift is to drain the life out of others. Erik compliments her on her obvious power, and she flushes when Jean translates. Jean is often there, but not always, and Erik gets adept in a sort of three-fingered sign language.

Charles doesn’t seem to have told anyone what he learned about Erik’s children. Time marches on.  
  
  
  
LOGAN

Logan’s the one who figures it out.

Charles is pontificating about Erik—his favorite subject, at least to those who he is close enough with to have moments where he is more than just the King asking for a grain count or a trade report. He’s telling Logan and Scott, who is drowsing, half-asleep, about his latest dinner with Erik, where the children tried to give him some of their sweet pastries and Erik had said, gently, “No, you eat those; I’ll save these nuts, all right, and if we’re hungry, we can eat them later.”

“They shouldn’t be hungry,” Charles is grumbling now. “I told him he would never go hungry here and offered to have more food sent up, but he couldn’t even finish the platter of roast beef in the first place. Perhaps I should look into having him sent different foods? Through experimentation I thought I had settled the question of what he likes to eat… perhaps I should begin again…” and while Charles is scratching notes on the corner of a piece of parchment paper like he’s a scientist and Erik is his favorite experiment, Logan remembers starving. It’s been a long time since he was starved. But the feeling—the desire to squirrel away as much food as you can, so you don’t have to face the nasty gnawing hunger in your gut—it takes a while to dissipate.

So Logan adds some orders of his own to the demands Charles sends down to the kitchen. For Erik’s breakfast meal, which usually neither Jean nor Charles attend, he adds to the porridge and fresh fruits a variety of nonperishable foods: a jar of honey, big cups of nuts and dried fruit leather, so that he can keep them if they’re needed. The next time he sees Erik, he looks less stressed around the eyes, and Logan is sure there are contributing factors other than the way it’s now easier for him to stash food in case of emergency, but he remembers how calming it was to have his own food, to hide it well and know that no one could take it from him, to call it his _own._

Charles, of course, ruins it.

He overhears Erik explaining his reserves to the children one day. “He said,” Charles says to Jean as Logan loiters against her study wall, waiting for Charles to leave so that he can continue pestering her, “that he had to save some food. He had _stacks_ of those little pots the kitchen puts nuts in, little honeypots, almost a platterful of dried fruit.” Charles’s voice is tight and taut as a bowstring. “Do you know anything about this? Is it a Genoshan custom?”

Jean shakes her head and says, slowly, “I don’t know, Charles. Genosha has never been a nation of scarcity, at least in the travel texts I read… perhaps that’s something that’s changed in recent years? Under Shaw?”

“Their warriors certainly seemed well-fed,” Charles grumbled.

Logan sighs. It’s clearly up to him to explain this. “My lord,” he says, “do you know how hounds are trained?”

“Logan, we’re discussing something,” Charles says absently.

“I know,” Logan grumbles. “You never shut up about it. Listen, this is important. The kennelmaster will sometimes keep dogs from their dinner. It’s a way to make them obedient, to get them to learn to follow instructions, lest they go hungry that night.”

“Yes?” Charles asks impatiently.

Logan closes his eyes. He has to make this real simple, hm? (God, his lust over the omega has turned his King into an _idiot._ ) “Genosha had plenty of food, my lord. Just not for Erik.”

Slowly the truth dawns on Charles, followed by a thunderclap of rage flashing across his features. Jean uses her hand to cover a low moan of dismay. “How could anyone—” she says, her voice strained, “how could _anyone_ —to their mate? To their _omega_ mate?” She stands, smooths out her skirts. “I need to speak to him,” she says firmly. “Let him know that we will _never_ withhold food as punishment.”

“Even if he burns down the castle?” Logan asks dryly. Jean shoots him a glare and, at Charles’s tense nod, takes her leave, undoubtedly to trot up the increasingly well-worn stairs to the North Tower. Charles sits heavily on one of the chairs Jean leaves out for her informants and petitioners, rubbing his thigh like he does when something is bothering him particularly.

Logan hesitates. It’s not his place, but—“Charles,” he says, low and gentle, not “my lord,” like he used to when Charles was just a boy and Logan was his regent. No one’s listening to hear him take such liberties with the King. Charles looks up, his eyes weary, and Logan almost thinks better of what he has to say. “You ought to leave him alone, Charles.”

A smile twitches along Charles’s face. “Did Jean put you up to this?”

“Years of watching alphas take what they want from omegas with no consequences put me up to this,” Logan tells him. 

Charles rakes a hand through his hair. “Kings partake in the spoils of war all the time,” he points out. “Usually without this much trouble.”

“Not you,” Logan says. “Your grandfather would have. Your father might have. But you are better than that.”

“Am I?” Charles asks, and Logan’s _of course_ dies on his tongue. Last year, he would’ve said _Without question._ But now he watches Charles watch the omega, and though he will serve Charles until the King’s dying breath, it leaves him uneasy. Want that powerful. It leaves him worried.  
  
  
  
CHARLES

It’s Raven, in the end—Raven who knows him better than anyone, Raven who grew up with him, taking his blows for him, Raven who is his staunchest, most stalwart friend—who truly unsettles him. He’s helping Raven watch Kurt and Marie play, and speaking without really paying attention to what he’s saying about how Kurt and Pietro and Wanda have apparently made friends. Somehow, this becomes a discussion about how adorable Pietro and Wanda are—and Kurt and Marie, of course, but Charles has been telling Raven that they are adorable since they were born or adopted—and at some point Raven stops talking, just sits back and watches him go over how Pietro had tried to make him versions of the paper bird he’d made for him, how Wanda’s whole being lit up when she heard his distinctive step in the hallway, how their minds glittered like constellations of light.

“You’re different around him,” she says finally, once Charles has run out of words and breath. He knows, at once, that she’s not talking about Kurt or Pietro.

“Are you going to tell me that I should stop pursuing him as well?” Charles asks, perhaps a bit snidely. Raven pinches him reprovingly.

“Not bad different,” she says. “If I were a different woman, I would say… you look happier when you talk about him. About him and his children.” Charles, stunned into silence, says nothing. “Don’t… don’t mess this up, all right, Charles?” And she says nothing else, just turns to reprimand Kurt for putting his tail in his mouth (it’s a bad habit she and Irene are constantly trying to break him of) but Charles is left unsettled and off-balance. _Happy?_ Certainly what he feels is—stronger than lust. Stronger than love, even, dearer to him than peace. But he had never thought of it as making him _happy._

He contemplates _happiness_ as he ascends the stairs to Erik’s tower room. The guards don’t even glance at each other, he is here so often, though it is late, though he knows they, too, have grown to care for Erik, and he wonders if the entire castle has seen what Raven had seen— _happiness_.

He closes the door behind himself and limps quietly to Erik’s bedchamber. At the door, he lights a lamp, but shields the flickering pool of illumination with his hand, so as not to wake Erik or his children. There is no window set on the wall of their bedroom, so Erik sleeps in perfect darkness, but for the shafts of light spilling from behind Charles’s hand. He holds the lamp up and gazes upon Erik, who stirs as the light catches on his eyelashes, but only to bury his nose in Wanda’s hair. Wanda mumbles in her sleep and clutches her doll closer to her. Charles smiles at her briefly before returning his attention to Erik, who—

Who is awake.

Erik’s light eyes, not bleary or sleep-struck at all, meet Charles’s with perfect clarity. He doesn’t stir from where he held Wanda close to him, Pietro on his other side with his little back pressed against Erik’s side. He doesn’t speak; instead, he projects, clearly and calmly, _Come to look upon your prize, King of Westchester?_

 _Yes,_ Charles thinks, and presses everything he’s feeling in that moment toward Erik.

Between them, an understanding passes in that moment. They both know Charles’s attraction to Erik. That he is a position where he can order Erik to his bed, and not only will Erik not be able to stand against him, he would probably be mostly relieved that he’s not as bad as Shaw.

But he doesn’t want that. Erik blinks uncertainly, like he’s not quite sure what to make of Charles; Charles is growing used to that expression. Eventually, Erik tucks his chin over Wanda’s head and closes his eyes and returns to the slow, steady breaths of sleep, and Charles is left to watch him, to drink in his beauty and admire his form, and to never, ever, touch.  
  
  
  
ERIK

Erik is waiting for Charles. Ever since that night, the night Charles came into his room with a lamp and said nothing and did nothing and just watched him until he fell back asleep, ever since Erik first signaled that he would not be totally opposed to lying with Charles, he’s been waiting. Charles is a good man; he knows this now. Charles would never take him by force. But no force would be necessary. Charles has been kind and Erik is willing to thank him however he’d like, and he waits and he waits for Charles to take him up on it, but Charles never does.

Erik doesn’t understand. He can see the way Charles looks at him.

One morning Jean offers to take the children out on an adventure so they can get fresh air. They’ve been in the castle for months now, and Erik has at last accepted that the children won’t be stolen from him at any moment; when she proposes the idea, relief washes over him. At last. He can at last prove his worth to the King and make sure that his children will be safe. The horror in Charles’s eyes when he’d told him about the dead children—he doesn’t _think_ that Charles will hurt them even if he takes Erik as his concubine, but before he lies with him he will demand Charles ensure Pietro and Wanda’s safety, and then he’ll see how Charles responds.

He dresses in the gifts Charles gave him—a sheer, elaborately embroidered robe that Erik thinks looks silly, but had struck Charles silent when he’d seen Erik in it—the jewels and gold that Charles bequeaths upon him at regular intervals. He tucks his hair back with a sapphire hairpin Jean had had to explain the functioning of, slots bracelets over his wrists and a gold girdle around his waist and hips that frames his cock and hole. Then he sits on the bed and waits.

And waits.

By the time Wanda and Pietro return, he’s all but pulling his hair out. Pietro and Wanda are babbling about the forest they and Jean walked through, the tallness of the trees and the the greenness of them, the coolness of the shade and the loudness of the birds. Erik stands to greet them, off-balance, and Wanda throws herself into his arms. “I brought you a pretty rock, Papa!” Wanda chirps. She holds out a gray rock, striped through with red sediment, and Erik takes it and smiles at her unsteadily.

“Thank you, my little robin,” he says, finally finding his voice.

“You look pretty, Papa,” Pietro says, goggling at his hairpin. He grabs for it and Erik leans down and shows Pietro how to unfasten it without pulling off a chunk of hair. Pietro smiles, trying to see himself in the reflection of the polished sapphire.

“When is Charles coming?” Wanda asks. “I brought him a pretty leaf.”

“I—” Erik wrestles with words. “I don’t know,” he admits. Wanda shrugs and shows Pietro her leaf for, judging by the way he rolls his eyes, the twentieth time, and Jean smiles at him and asks if he’s hungry, and Erik says something to her—he doesn’t remember what—and stares at his hands. He tries to work out how he feels about Charles leaving him alone. Perhaps Jean just hadn’t told him that the children were going out? Perhaps he’s waiting to make sure that Erik isn’t pregnant first, whether by Shaw or Prince Cain. Perhaps Charles… doesn’t want him as much as he appears to. 

Erik turns over the hard and flat feeling in his chest, mapping it, trying to figure out why his mouth tastes like disappointment.


	14. II: the sun of my youth over the sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: elements of sexual coercion, aftermath of rape.
> 
> Title from "Maine Yet Miami" from Richard Blanco.
> 
> Updates may slow considerably from this point, as the semester has started and posting has caught up to where I'm currently writing.

CHARLES

Charles is taking dinner with Erik when he mentions that he used to ride. Charles chews slowly on a morsel of meat, wondering at the fact that he never considered that even omegas would have to ride from encampment to encampment in nomadic Genosha. “Would you like to go riding with me?” he asks, watching Erik wipe futilely at Pietro’s face.

He knows from the way Erik’s eyes light in immediate interest, though they then shadow with caution, that he’s said the right thing.

He arranges for himself and Erik to ride out together. Scott protests Charles’s decision to go without guards, but Charles points out that Erik is suppressed, that Charles is a telepath, that his children will be hostages, and that Erik hasn’t tried to kill him at all since coming to Westchester, and Scott backs down. The sun is high but not yet at its peak when Erik is escorted down to the stables by his guards. He’s smiling shyly, glancing around at his surroundings; of course, this is the first time he’s been out of his chambers since he was brought here. He lights up when he sees the horses, including the large white-gray stallion that Charles has selected for their ride today. He holds out a gentle hand and smiles when Maunara, the horse, butts at it. “He likes you,” Charles says fondly.

“I haven’t ridden in a long time,” Erik says quietly. “Since before the war.”

“Don’t worry,” Charles reassures him, “I’ll do the hard work. You can ride behind me.”

Erik gives him a slanted smile that Charles can’t interpret, but goes willingly enough as the grooms attach Charles’s custom brace to the saddle. Charles mounts, then holds out a hand to Erik to help him up—but Erik vaults easily over the back of the horse and settles behind Charles, his hands on Charles’s waist. Charles can feel the heat of his hands through his tunic and tries not to shiver. “Hold on,” he says, and starts the horse at an easy walk toward the high road. People scurry out of his way and bow when they recognize him, and he gives them regal nods back, but his attention is only half on the horse and his people; the rest of it is focused solely on his waist, where Erik’s touch sears like a brand.

Erik sighs happily as they emerge onto the main road, then immediately break off to take one of the trails through the woods. Charles glances back; wind has lifted up his hair and brought color into his cheeks, and he looks _content,_ the worry has lifted from his features in a way that Charles has rarely, if ever, seen; ever since he first met the fierce omega playing at being a warrior in the chieftain’s tent, Erik has been bouncing from worry to worry, first over what would happen to him, now an almost obsessive worry over the children’s safety that Charles understands—of course he understands, he can’t help but understand—but wishes were not so. To see him now, with his face unlined and his eyes closed as he savors the breeze and the movement of the horse beneath him, is to be reminded of how young he is, how much he’s suffered for his age, and how beautiful and strong he is to have emerged from it like he has.

“You’re a terrible rider,” Erik says, and Charles is so affected by the flutter of Erik’s long eyelashes that it takes him a moment to register what Erik is saying, and then another moment to be offended.

“Excuse me?” he sputters.

“I knew all Westchesterians were bad ahorse, but I had no idea they were this bad,” Erik says, his eyes crinkling, and Charles realizes with astonishment that Erik is _teasing_ him. His heart thumps madly in his chest. “Loosen your hips, King of Westchester.”

 _I can’t,_ Charles wants to say, _you might take your hands away,_ but he makes an effort. The horse snorts. Erik laughs, a beautiful sound, like the crackling of fall leaves. “Even the horse knows you are not a natural rider,” Erik says, the smile curling the edges of his voice. Charles grunts, pleased that someone is having fun at least, and increases the pace to a light canter as they get farther from the castle and city. “Genoshans are born astride a horse,” Erik explains, a little melancholy. “I was teaching the children to ride when…”

“Aren’t they too young for that?” Charles asks, pointedly ignoring the unsaid second part of Erik’s sentence.

“They’re four,” Erik says dubiously. “Certainly too small to ride full-size horses, but ponies are not out of the question. I could teach you, if you wanted.”

Charles laugh-coughs. “I don’t need an omega to teach me how to ride,” he says, amused, and Erik’s smile turns mocking and disbelieving.

“Clearly you do,” he says. Charles huffs and ignores him, tries his best to ignore him, to ignore how Erik presses a secret smile into his shoulder as he holds on to Charles, his grip sure and warm and enticing.

Charles takes them to a meadow a mile or so away from the castle, waits for Erik to dismount, and then begins the laborious process of getting himself out of the saddle without a groom to help him. He could’ve taken a groom, and a few guards—and probably should have—but the idea of getting Erik alone, without the children or Jean or Logan watching over his shoulder, had been too delicious to resist. Erik watches him for a moment, then moves to help him with the straps. Charles is amused to see that his fingers are much more sure and capable over this piece of equipment than they are over the fastenings of his own clothes. With Erik’s help, Charles is down quickly, and he unloads the basket of food he’d had the kitchens make up.

He takes Erik’s arm and brings him to the stream trickling down the edges of the meadow; Erik immediately kicks his shoes off and sticks his feet in the water, and Charles can’t hide a smile at this indelicacy. He’d had the kitchens pack Erik’s favorites, roast chicken wings and a hearty pepper stew and some of the less sweet fruits and a thick puddinglike chocolate thing that Erik had devoured the first time he’d had it, and Erik smiles a little shyly at him when he sees. Steam rises from the closed basket when Charles opens it—they haven’t been riding that long—and Erik and Charles don’t bother with plates, they eat right from the basket, their hands brushing against each other as they reach for different things. Charles likes to watch Erik eat—more so now that he knows that that bastard Shaw had starved him, it’s another sign, his hindbrain whispers, of how much better of a mate he’d be for Erik—and Erik eats with relish, none of the feigned lack of appetite with which omegas in court eat, which Charles appreciates. He sometimes has enough of the facade for a lifetime.

As Erik dips his spoon into the stew, he says, lightly, conversationally, “If you wanted to fuck me, it might have been more comfortable to do it indoors. I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Charles pauses over his own meal. “Erik—” he says, searching for words. “I just thought you would like a day on horseback, that’s all.”

“To what end?” Erik asks. “Is Westchester so different, that you don’t have ulterior motives here?”

“No,” Charles admits. “But… the only ulterior motive I have is to attain more moments in your company.”

“I don’t believe that,” Erik says, smiling, a cold, ironic smile. Charles much prefers it when his eyes are closed in the bliss of experiencing freedom, or something like it, for the first time in months. “What do you want from me, King of Westchester?”

“For you to be happy,” Charles says, calm, definitive.

“I’m happy,” Erik protests. He sets his spoon down, with a daintiness that doesn’t suit him, and then reaches over and squeezes Charles’s clothed, soft cock, which starts to harden immediately. Charles curses his traitorous blood. “I could make you happy as well.”

Charles takes a deep breath, takes Erik’s hand, holds it in his lap. “Erik… if you never want to have sex again, that would be all right, and your wishes would be respected. Jean and Logan are correct. You can _always_ say no to me. But I hope you’ll allow me to continue to look upon you and relish your beauty. And…” He traces a line on Erik’s palm. Erik doesn’t shudder, just continues to look at him with those unwavering eyes, those unflinching eyes that have seen horrors far beyond rape and abuse and yet continue to gleam with life. “And if I could hold you… I would like that very much.”

Erik doesn’t move. Eventually, he inclines his head, just the tip of a jaw, and Charles detects no hostility in him at the idea, just a kind of bewildered vulnerability that he would never show on his face, so Charles scoots closer and puts his arm around Erik’s shoulders. Erik is at first tense, and in his mind Charles can see the memories of Shaw’s arm around his waist and his knot in his ass, but slowly the memories melt away as Charles fails to press for more, and Erik puts his head down on Charles’s shoulder, and Charles closes his eyes and relishes the heat of Erik’s breath skittering along his jaw. They curl together like lovers on a lounging chair. Erik stares at where his feet are dipped into the stream, wiggles his bare toes, and says quietly, “I didn’t think I’d be treated so kindly, after what I’d heard of Westchester’s omegas.”

What? Charles is loathe to draw away from Erik to give him a questioning look, so instead he projects his confusion into Erik’s mind. “What do you mean?”

“My husband—” Charles tries not to flinch; Erik calls Shaw _my husband_ or _my alpha_ with such casual deference that it makes shudders run down Charles’s back, “—he told me that you didn’t educate your omegas until late.” Charles purses his lips; it’s true, but _late_ means about forty years ago, and most omegas alive can read and write. “That you don’t let omegas work at _all_ , the way he didn’t let me work, that you punish them all the way he punished me. He said that you take babies away from their dams, give them to…” Erik pronounces something that is clearly meant to be _nannies_ in a thick Genoshan accent, but his mind is devoid of meaning of the word aside from a vague child-snatching monster. “He said that your consorts only birth one child.”

Charles—is baffled. There are some things that are clear misunderstandings, some shameful facts, and some things that are just… positives? Or normal? that Erik speaks of as though they are the worst things he can imagine. “Let’s do this one thing at a time,” he says slowly. “We began to educate omegas under my father’s reign. I would have thought that _you_ were uneducated, but Jean tells me you can read and write.”

“I learned as my brothers and sisters did,” Erik confirms. “Why would you think me uneducated? We treat omegas better than you do.”

“You—” Charles huffed a laugh. “Why would you work, darling? I should think your husband putting you to work was a punishment, not keeping you from it.”

Erik frowns at him mightily. “I know I’m a prisoner, but what do your omegas do to occupy their time?”

Charles shrugs. He’s never much thought about it. “Needlework, I suppose? Pregnant omegas must of course rest.”

“I rested while I was pregnant,” Erik counters him. “My husband did not even send me to service his generals.” Charles’s stomach flips over—every time Erik mentions Shaw, he wants to crush something into small pieces, he wants to take the treaty Genosha signed and rip it to shreds. “But no one, not even an omega, can rest _all_ the time. I helped the weaponsmaster with my gift, and would have gladly done more had my alpha not confined me to our tent.”

“There is so much about that that makes me worry for you,” Charles sighs.

“What is a life devoid of meaningful pursuits?” Erik asks. “Would _you_ be happy were you confined to your quarters all day long, with nothing to read, nothing to write, no orders to give?”

“Sometimes I think that would be better than the constant grind of the duties of my station,” Charles smiles.

“Oh,” Erik says dryly, “how could I have forgotten the hardship of commanding everyone to do your bidding?”

“I take your point,” Charles says. “I’m not an omega, though. Omegas are delicate… weak,” he says, though Erik is anything but. Perhaps that’s why he likes him. “They require careful handling to flourish.”

“Why should your omegas be so much weaker than ours?” Erik asks. “Do you starve them?”

“No!” Charles splutters.

“Then I see no reason why an omega would be any less unhappy to do nothing than you.”

“That’s treason,” Charles says with a smile.

“Then put me to death, King of Westchester,” Erik says, but he smiles back, and Charles laughs and gently runs his fingers through Erik’s hair.

“Nannies are not what you think,” Charles continues. “We would never take a child away from their dam against their will. But sometimes an omega or beta woman would like to continue life at court unencumbered by caring for a child. Nannies help rear children, they don’t… steal away or snatch up children or whatever it is you’re imagining.”

This, at least, seems to relieve Erik instead of causing him to argue. “You don’t send your children away?”

“Perhaps eventually, to school,” Charles admits. “Sometimes dukes and barons send their children to be reared in the castle, in the hopes that they will grow closer to the royal heirs. But it’s not… it’s not what you think. And the vast majority of people keep their children with them always; they grow up learning their parents’ trades, is that not the way it is done in Genosha?”

“It is,” Erik says. His shoulders are set back, relaxed. Charles wonders with a pang if he has been imagining Wanda and Pietro being taken away from him at any moment to be sent to a nanny.

“We wouldn’t take the twins,” Charles says gently.

“So you keep telling me,” Erik says, and smiles tremulously. He still doesn’t believe them. Charles abandons the thought of attempting to reassure him some more; if he still has nightmares about his children being taken from him, it’s only understandable, and only time will heal those wounds.

Charles comes at last to the part of Erik’s list that most baffles him. “And why would having only one child be cause for alarm?”

Erik looks at him like he’s _stupid._ “Do you beat your consorts so viciously that only one child survives, then?”

“What—” Charles’s words fail him. “I would never!” 

“Even in my… in my torment, I managed to carry and birth three successfully,” Erik says.

“That’s because you—” Charles bites his lips before he can say the crass construction that comes to mind. Erik’s _not_ a whore, not a slut. He had no choice in who he spread his legs for. “You had multiple sires, Erik.”

Erik’s brow furrows. “…Yes? I was the chieftain’s mate.”

“Westchester does not… do that.”

This, at last, seems to baffle Erik as much as his list of ways in which omegas were “mistreated” had baffled Charles. “You… don’t? How do you… ensure your generals’ loyalty?”

“Why on earth would I need to offer my consort as a prize to ensure my generals’ loyalty?” Charles snaps. He doesn’t mean to be curt with Erik, but the _thought_ of it—and Erik can’t be his consort. Obviously. Erik is not a virgin, and a savage, and has not even a throne or an alliance to recommend the match. But still, Charles dreams, and in those dreams, if Ororo or Logan put their hands on Erik—

“It’s not a prize,” Erik says, confusion still bright in his eyes. “It’s… part of the security of the nation is based on that all of the generals know that they shouldn’t lead a coup, because the chieftain’s children are their own as well.”

“Perhaps,” Charles says, trying not to sound cruel, “a good ruler would promote those who would be loyal to him without the bonds of family.”

“But the bonds of family are stronger than all else,” Erik argues. “Why not use them to bind the most important warriors to the chieftain’s line?”

“Because you’re worth more than that!” Charles shouts. Erik reels backward, pulls back from Charles’s arm for the first time since he settled into his embrace. “I’m sorry,” he says. He chastises himself sharply. Of course this is only theoretical—of course Erik is not his consort, not his would-be consort, can never be his consort, and this would never be an issue. “I’m sorry. I simply—I don’t understand how you can be so blase about it—how you can claim that Genosha treats omegas better than Westchester—when they subject the queens and consorts of your people to such _cruelty_ for the sake of cementing alliances.”

Erik studies him for a long moment. “It’s not cruelty,” he says after a moment.

“Erik, you—you suffered terribly,” Charles says, uncertain. Erik always seemed to have an awareness that how he was treated had not been right, so why does he seem to have gone back on that understanding now?

“Yes,” Erik says, “but that’s because of who my mate was, not because of the customs of my people. Had… had my parents survived, I likely would have been mated to the chief of a neighboring tribe. And I would have been mated to their generals as well on the last night of my childhood, and any heat after that as I wished. And I would have enjoyed it. It would not have been suffering.”

As Charles attempts to wrap his head around that, Erik continues, “My mother… my mother always chose to share her heat with two particular generals in addition to my father, and she was happy. And I know my father loved me. Loved us all, whether we were visibly his or not.” Charles thinks of Wanda and Pietro, and for the first time feels a flash of empathy with this Genoshan stranger who he had only known distantly until reports came in that he had been killed and his throne usurped by a warrior named Sebastian Shaw. “As a child, I was content. I was _happy.”_

“Show me,” Charles breathes, and Erik turns back into his arms. Charles leans forward, presses his forehead against Erik’s own, and sinks into memory.

A feast. The perspective Charles is watching the scene from is that of a small child, propped up on a woman’s lap. She is smiling at the dancers moving wildly—flailing, Charles would call it, except he sees through Erik’s eyes a kind of geometric beauty to their movements—around a bonfire. Small Erik looks up at her and grabs for her hair. She smiles down at him. She has a square, strong face and Erik’s light eyes, but lit up with joy and contentment that Charles has never seen. _“Can I?”_ Erik asks, and Erik’s mother kisses his forehead and sets him down, and he crawls under the feasting table to join the dancers, one of whom laughs and picks him up when she sees him. He tries to mimic their movements, but Charles loses the concentration necessary to keep looking through his eyes in the blur of light from the fire and the stars overhead and his mother’s melodic laugh.

A cooking fire. Erik’s mother is salting some kind of meat and threading skewers through strips of it so that it can be grilled over the fire. Erik is older, but still splayed at her feet; he has a little sheet of vellum stretched out in front of him, and is using fingers dipped in charcoal to draw. Something is taking shape under his fingers, but Charles can’t quite see what; the memory is blurred through time and youth. Erik’s mother looks up and her eyes widen, and she snatches Erik out of the way—he cries out in dismay as he accidentally leaves a jagged line across the vellum—and two other people, young still, only just teenagers, a ten-year-old girl grappling a fourteen-year-old boy, come crashing through the scene, almost trampling the fire. “Ruth! Leon!” Erik’s mother shouts, but Charles can see there’s no real anger in it. Small Erik is sniffling and prodding at his drawing, and when Erik’s mother glances down and sees, Charles can see the way her eyes widen in sympathy. She wipes his tears away with knuckles that are not encrusted with salt and blood, says soothingly, “Shhh. We can always scrape it off and try it again.”

“But it was gonna be really _good_ ,” Erik protests.

“It’ll be good again,” Erik’s mother says. “I know you’ll make it so.”

A sunset outdoors. Erik is attempting to catch fireflies with his hands. Behind him, the chaos and cacophony of many children of varying ages roughhousing and boasting and vying for attention, but he doesn’t look, with the surety only someone who is totally secure in how much he is loved can have that his siblings and parents are behind him. He fixates on a particular sparking light, jumps as it lifts in the air above his head—and at once someone’s hands lift him under his armpits and he’s within striking distance of the firefly. He looks up and sees his oldest brother, Leon, grinning down at him, and smiles back, the firefly butting against the cradle of his fingers. Leon sets him down and peers between his fingers; Erik gently opens his cupped hands so they can both look at the light flickering against his skin. Someone shrieks; out of the corner of his eye, Erik can see his parents attempting to pry apart a pair of twins who have started throwing balls at each other’s heads. Leon smells like horses and steel, the way a warrior smells, and Small Erik knows that he wants to be just like him.

A bright sunny day. Erik and another child his age are each curled under his mother’s arms, as she spreads out vellum in front of them and begins to draw on them with her fingers, dipped in charcoal like Erik’s had been. She draws the spiky, hard characters of Genoshan writing and gently guides both Erik and his brother through pronouncing each letter. Erik is not paying much attention; he puts his head on his mother’s shoulder and watches butterflies dance over the grass in the distance. His mother pinches his ear, gently, to bring his attention back to the lesson. Small Erik breathes in the smell of sweetgrass fields stretching toward the horizon and lazily his eyes drift back down to his mother’s hands. A shadow falls over them; his father, laughing, sweeps up his mother messily, Erik and his brother caught in the movement, so that everything is a jumble of love and giggles. Erik looks up in time to see his father fit his nose into the crease of his mother’s neck, and for her to smile beatifically, her hand stroking gently down the side of his face. Erik thinks: _I want that someday._

The feeling of sheer _peace_ that spreads through him, the melancholy ache of Erik’s loss and the joyous pangs of remembrance, they all bring tears to Charles’s eyes. He closes them, feeling saltwater slip down his cheeks, and turns his face into the Erik-of-now’s hair. Erik has on an expression of almost glassy calm. _I tried to give Wanda and Pietro that feeling,_ he thinks. _That feeling of family. Though their siblings were dead. Though their parents’ marriage was a mockery. I tried to get them to expect better. I don’t know what they think of the future now, though._

 _When they think of the future,_ Charles tells him, _they think of each other. And you, your presence stretching on into infinity. They never want to lose you._ You _are their family._ Erik closes his eyes and thinks of nothing else, replaying his mother’s surprised smile as his father lifts her into his arms over and over again. He doesn’t ask Charles to reciprocate, to give him his own memories as payment for the memories Erik gladly shared with Charles. He would allow Charles to remain a cipher, invulnerable, impenetrable. But Charles—Charles may not have the words for his own childhood, the loneliness of it, the terrible absences, but he finds that he wants to try to find them for the first time in a long time.

 _It was different for me,_ he tells Erik. _It would be different for me, were I to have children. I would want to give them everything I didn’t have._

 _Tell me,_ Erik whispers, and Charles closes his eyes and let the memories play out in the darkness of his eyelids. Feasts, not full of joy and dancing like Erik’s memories were, but stiff and long and full of his tutor looming behind him ready to correct him if he used the wrong fork or knife. He remembers his father, indistinctly, his face smudged with time and romanticism, but much clearer are his memories of his stepfather, who was cruel and scheming and, if Charles hadn’t killed him first, would have almost certainly murdered Charles so that Cain could ascend the throne. He remembers his mother, downing glass after glass of wine, until her hair was unruly and her face was ruddy.

He remembers a procession of ever-changing tutors and nannies— _My mother was not… like you,_ Charles confesses quietly. _She didn’t want to concern herself with the process of raising a child. Here, nannies, tutors—they’re services reserved for the rich. They’re good things._ He can feel Erik’s quiet disapproval and smiles a little helplessly. Even Charles has long stopped since being indignant on his child self’s behalf; the line that creases between Erik’s brows is new and startling and endearing. Charles remembers being bored during lessons himself, staring out the window in summer, waiting for a breeze to come and lift the thick and sweltering air, but it seemed to have never come, lessons seemed to have dragged on forever. He remembers spending his childhood hiding. In the eaves, in the secret passages, peeking out onto a bustling kitchen, another small hand in his.

Erik prods at that memory, and Charles lets it unfurl in front of them both. Raven, even smaller than him, sniffling; he puts his arms around her comfortingly. Raven staring in horror at a smashed glass globe on the floor and Charles scrambling to put it back together, though he knows he can’t, though he knows that Raven will suffer for _his_ mistake. _She was my only friend,_ Charles says slowly. _And what was between us was always… tainted._ He thinks of a light whip. Of being forced to count out each stroke Raven received, tears streaming down on his own face even as Raven bears it stoically, her eyes screwed up but her mouth an even unbroken line. _They couldn’t use the whip on me, so they used it on her whenever I made a mistake. I tried—so hard—to never make a mistake again—but I was never enough. Never good enough._

Erik’s fingers wend their way through Charles’s, and Charles takes a dizzy breath before he squeezes back, gratefully. _It’s an old tradition,_ he thinks gruffly. He can feel Erik’s muted dismay and horror. _And one I do not plan on continuing._

 _Good,_ Erik thinks fiercely.

Charles continues showing him memories, but slower, until he can no longer think of anything to share with Erik. Slowly, he draws back, but Erik doesn’t move from where his head is resting on Charles’s shoulder. _Thank you for showing me those memories,_ Charles thinks after a moment. _For letting me meet your mother, in this sense. She… she clearly loved you._

 _She loved us all,_ Erik thinks, but the sharp pain of grief is blunted a little now. He adds, _She would have liked you as well._

_A foreign King entranced with her omega son?_

_A lost boy,_ Erik thinks hesitantly, as though he’s not sure he has the right, _who deserved better than what he had._

Charles swallows thickly. Of all the things he had not expected from Erik—had not expected to _need_ from Erik—compassion was ranked highly among them. Of course Erik would need _Charles’s_ compassion, of course he would need his sufferance and generosity. But what succor could a King need, much less expect, from a prisoner? But as Erik’s fingers hesitantly stroke down his arm, he feels a great wave of thankfulness sweep over him. Goosebumps rise in the wake of Erik’s touch, and to distract himself Charles dwells on how fundamentally _kind_ Erik is, that he has sympathy and gentleness to spare for a King.

Truly, he thinks. He is his mother’s son. 

They linger under the leaves until long after the full stickiness of afternoon sunlight is upon them, and only when Charles starts sensing Erik’s worry about having left the children alone for so long, that he is imposing on Kitty’s time and duties, does he sigh and heave himself to his feet. He offers Erik a hand, and Erik takes it—less to get himself to his feet, Charles thinks, and more to simply touch. They pack up the remnants of their lunch and, in a fit of capriciousness, Charles falls in step behind Erik as they return to where Maunara is tethered. Erik glances back at him curiously.

“You said you can do a better job with the horse,” Charles says, smiling. “Let’s see it.”

Erik’s expression melts from confusion into pure joy. He takes the reins with sure, steady hands and gallantly offers to help Charles get strapped into the saddle, then neatly mounts himself in front of Charles. Charles half-expects Erik to take off at a run, but instead he gently guides the horse into an easy, sedate pace. At once, Charles can tell that Erik _is_ better than he is; Erik’s body is relaxed, his grip firm, his hips easy, and it seems as though he barely has to nudge the horse to get him to do what he wants. When they get back to the main road, they dismount and switch places again. Charles takes Erik’s shy teasing about his skill in stride; never let it be said that he is not a man who flees from the truth.

Charles sweeps twigs out of Erik’s hair, and takes in his smile, his glorious, sweet smile, the smile that Charles has well and truly lost his head over. 

They ride back to the castle, Erik’s arms around Charles’s waist, his head resting on Charles’s shoulder, and Charles tries not to listen but can’t quite help, as wound deeply into Erik’s mind as he had been all afternoon, but overhear as Erik thinks, _This was the happiest I’ve been since my parents died._

Charles slips a hand over Erik’s, winds their fingers together. Erik sighs and props his chin up on Charles’s shoulder. For the long minutes until they arrive back at the castle courtyard from the main road, Charles floats in the warmth and appreciation of Erik’s thoughts, borne along in a sea of gratitude and thanks. 

Jean is waiting for them. Charles had purposefully not told her of their plans this afternoon, and she is grinding her teeth and glancing anxiously at the royal entrance to the courtyard every few moments; when her eyes light upon them, she narrows them suspiciously at the way Charles’s hand is tucked over Erik’s. He smiles ruefully. Jean might actually kill Charles if he ended up hurting Erik in any way, and while this thought is tinged with some annoyance, it’s also colored with gratitude; good, that Erik has a defender, a protector.

Jean keeps her distance while the grooms help him dismount; one tries to help Erik, but Erik slips off the saddle easily as water. Charles remembers _the happiest I’ve been since my parents died_ and, before Jean can protest, draws Erik to him and holds him, for just a moment, feeling Erik’s stiff surprise melt away into warm reciprocity of his embrace. He tucks Erik’s face into the curve of his neck and, when he draws away, leaves a kiss on his cheek. Erik flushes a beautiful pink before he lets the guards take charge of him and march him back upstairs.

Surprisingly, Jean doesn’t follow him. It’s Charles she’s raring to fight with today, apparently. Charles watches the grooms lead Maunara back to his stall and beckons for Jean to follow him as he heads back to his study. Jean fumes beside him in stormy silence as they take the stairs and passages to Charles’s chambers in the central tower.

“Go ahead,” Charles says wearily, as he lowers himself down in an armchair. “Lambast me.”

“How can you be so flippant?” Jean demands. “You took him out unchaperoned—do you know what that could do to his honor?”

“He’s the widow of a barbarian king,” Charles says pragmatically. “In the eyes of the Court, he has no honor.”

Jean scowls. Charles sighs. “Jean—he’s not a courtier I’m wooing. There are no forms of propriety to be followed here.”

“Only that of your libido.”

“That’s not fair,” Charles protests. “I just want to spend time with him.”

“To what end?” Jean looks frustrated enough to cry. “Do you want to make him a concubine? Install him in your harem? Or will you send him back to Genosha one day with your blessing? I _know_ you haven’t thought of it, and that’s the problem!” she cuts him off when he opens his mouth. “His _whole life_ is in your hands, Charles. He could lead a happy life back in Genosha, or even here, with a reasonably high-status mate. Or he can be the whore of a King. Again. If this is a passing infatuation of yours—”

“Have you ever known me to lose my head over passing infatuations?” Charles demands.

Jean deflates. “No. I just—I beg of you, my lord, to _think_ about what you want from him, and what he can give you. What _you_ can give _him._ He cannot be your consort, Charles. If you wanted to keep him, you would be consigning him forever to the silks and status of concubinage.”

Charles scrubs at his face. “Would that really be so bad?” he asks plaintively. “He would be well-cared for. His children would be cosseted and adored.” Perhaps, he thinks, though he knows this is premature, he could take them for wards, the way he had taken Jean—give them his own name, let the Xavier line continue. It is not unheard of for a heir to spring from a concubine’s loins, either—he shakes off his daydreams. He needs all his wits to deal with Jean in this mood, he can’t spare any on beautiful impossibilities. “It is not as sordid as you make it sound, Jean. I would not make him a slave, I would not catch him and shut him up in the harem against his will. I would only offer it should we deem it mutually beneficial.”

“’Mutually beneficial,’” Jean says slowly. “Like it is a business arrangement. _This_ is why I worry, Charles. I don’t actually think you know what you’re doing to your own heart. Or to his.”

They fail to come to an accord, as usual. Jean leaves in a huff. And Charles…

Words follow him to bed that night, swirling about his head, as vibrant and cutting as though someone had whispered them in his ear that moment. _I don’t actually think you know what you’re doing to your own heart,_ Jean had said, and Charles isn’t quite sure either; the only thing he is sure about is the _want_ that sweeps through him whenever he thinks about Erik, the want that he is sure will never fade into polite disinterest. 

The other words in his mind are Erik’s. _The happiest I’ve been since my parents died._ And in the face of that, all the perfectly rational concerns Jean has brought up flicker and fail—wither to nothing in the face of how, at once, Charles knows that his only priority, the thing he wants more than reason or sense or his own happiness, is making Erik feel that way again.


	15. II: your stormy north is possible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Temporarily in Oxford," by Anne Stevenson.

JEAN

Scott doesn’t mind Jean’s attachment to Erik. If anything, he’s ecstatic, because it gives him more opportunities to “supervise the prisoners”—that is, babysit. Jean agrees to teach him basic Genoshan, but Scott and the children generally communicate through sign language and pointing, the three of them happily babbling away at each other, barely understanding what’s being said. She smiles to see the kids mimic the words that sound silly in Genoshan—it’s another way for them to pick up the language, which can only be of benefit to them, no matter where they end up, in Genosha or in Westchester or maybe in another foreign state entirely. Scott’s patience and enthusiasm for the children is inexhaustible. There are Westchesterian children around the castle, of course, but they have their own support systems, nannies and assigned networks of babysitters that Erik lacks.

And, Scott says bashfully, it’s a way for him to spend more time with his wife; leading the children through a garden walk while Erik and Jean talk from the balustrade, or letting the children climb all over him while Jean takes Erik through another language lesson in his quarters, he has the opportunity to glance over and smile at Jean, which their duties rarely allow them to do. And he loves children. So just as Jean spends nearly all her spare time outside of her duties with Erik, so Scott spends nearly all his free time outside his duties following in her footsteps and fulfilling whatever childcare duties are necessary for Jean and Erik to converse. 

Jean tries not to let it make her too uneasy.

She knows that Scott wants children. The hermits of Carnelia know that Scott wants children. So far, it has always been a conversation that she has managed to put off. But when she walks in one day on Scott with Pietro and Wanda dangling from his arms, and Scott gives her an unconvincing grin and says, sheepishly, “The prisoners demanded piggy-backs,” she can’t help but feel that conversation drawing inexorably closer. It threatens to close around her throat; it threatens to choke her.

The children are lovely, but it’s one thing to teach them Westchesterian and another thing entirely to _have a child_ , to be pregnant and locked away from her books and letters, to give birth, to raise a squalling baby from infancy until they are of age enough to have personalities the way Pietro and Wanda do. She doesn’t know what to do about it; she doesn’t know where to turn. She hesitates to ask Erik for advice—she knows he loves his children, but still, he’s been used for breeding and sex for years, surely he will have nothing good to say about the prospect of pregnancy.

And Charles—her relationship with Charles has gone fraught, and he wouldn’t understand besides. He, like Scott, has always been waiting for her to decide she was comfortable with pregnancy, like an expectation, like a weight hanging around her neck. She can’t help but feel that the presence of the children in the North Tower are rushing them swiftly toward a reckoning—between Charles and Erik, but also between her and Scott—that the careful arrangements built on balance are teetering, threatening to fall.  
  
  
  
PIETRO

Pietro feels slow.

He sulks about it loudly and ostentatiously. Papa tries to comfort him, but Pietro can tell that he misses his own gift as well—he’d laughed when he’d held out a hand to the candlestick and it hadn’t come to him, but Pietro can tell that he was really actually sad about it, sad that he’d forgotten that their gifts are locked up from them. It’s just that sometimes one of their new friends, while watching them, will come up with the idea of racing, and Pietro will throw himself down and pout until Jean or whoever asks what’s wrong and Pietro tugs at the collar and then she looks uncomfortable and sad. Westchester is strange about gifts. Kitty and Scott have gifts, but they barely use them at all; it’s not like in Genosha, where your gift might determine your entire life, what you were suited for, how you could contribute. Here, it’s not quite like gifts are shameful, but they’re private, hidden away. Only Charles uses his gift freely and openly, and maybe only then because if he didn’t they couldn’t understand each other.

Most of the time, though, Pietro’s attention is entirely occupied by the process of making new friends. Kurt and Marie and Scott and Kitty and Bobby and Charles—Logan, too, though he and Wanda had been scared of him at first for no reason they could quite articulate. Charles had noticed, and had asked them about it, and Wanda had finally figured out that it was because Logan sniffed the air the same way Creed did, and they’d been terrified of Creed. (He’d known he wasn’t allowed to hurt them, he just enjoyed scaring them, Pietro explained. Charles had pulled a face that looked like pure horror, and had taken them to get acquainted with Logan, who, once he started making an active effort not to sniff the air, turned out to be quite nice and gentle.)

Logan brings them toys every time he sees them now, which also endears Pietro and Wanda to him; he claims he finds them. Their favorites are still the soft dolls Papa made for them that look like each other, but Logan’s carved them little mythical animals, like unicorns and tigers, and those are nice, too. And it’s not just Logan who brings them gifts. Charles unearths an old rocking horse from when he was a child, and Jean arranges for it to get a new coat of paint; it’s not the same as riding, but it’s fun. Jean brings back marbles from a diplomatic mission. Kurt shares his Westchesterian toys: tops, boats, hoops. Kitty shows them board games; there’s one that’s played on Charles’s chessboard, but instead of intricately carved pieces, it features small colored pieces that are all the same and that skip over each other like stepping stones.

They never had many toys at home, though Papa tried his best, and now they have Charles commissioning a miniature castle and tiny dolls, much smaller than their soft rag toys, that look like Papa and each of them and Jean and Charles and Scott and Logan, from an artisan in the market for them. Kunir and Garur still grow ragged and soft-edged after being dragged everywhere, but they have _so_ many more _things_ now. Westchester doesn’t move from place to place, Wanda theorizes, which is why they have so much _stuff,_ which is why Pietro and Wanda seem to be accumulating _stuff_ too. That, and the way that Charles beams whenever they unwrap a present.

They like Charles. They like Charles in a way they never liked their father. He was scary, and sometimes Papa cried when he was with him; he tried so hard to hide his tears from them, but children are more perceptive than anyone gives them credit for. Charles is nice, and he makes Papa smile; smiles that he _also_ tries to hide, but smiles nevertheless. 

Wanda wonders sometimes whether Charles will take their father’s place. If they should start practicing calling him “Father.” Pietro never says anything in response, but he feels increasingly like it’s an idea worth considering.  
  
  
  
CHARLES

Charles is looking for a history book in which an obscure precedent about vassal states might be hidden when he opens a heavy tome about King Charles IV to a pressed flower. At once, the long sunlit afternoon he and Raven spent hiding flower blossoms in various history texts rushes back to him. It’s been… decades, dusty years stacking on each other, wearing away the pains and pleasures of childhood. He runs a finger along the line of the petals, appreciating the dried, crisp colors.

It’s not Raven he wants to share this discovery with, this sudden chill wind of a childhood winter, he realizes, though she was the one who helped him lift the books down and clamp the cover shut over the curling blossoms. It’s Erik to whom he wants to bring these pressed flowers and reminisce, Erik with whom he wants to share every memory, every inch of this castle and its wonders, every good thing in his life. He ascends the stairs to the North tower—it is darkening swiftly outside, and he has to squint to see where he’s going without a candle, and he’d _just_ left after dinner to skim through the library, and now here he is again, and there are probably a thousand other reasons he shouldn’t barge in on Erik’s night, but he just wants to see him—and nods at the guards who do an admirable job of not looking surprised to see him back so soon after he’d seemingly left for the night.

Erik’s sitting room is deserted and dark; candlelight flickers out from the cracked door to his bedchamber, and Charles moves quietly, book in hand, to the slight seam of the door. He hears Wanda singing to herself—it’s a Westchesterian song, but bastardized into nonsense Genoshan words, and it makes him smile. He pushes the door open a little further. Erik is shirtless on his stomach on the bed, Wanda and Pietro perched on either side of him, and they are working their little fists into the meat of his back in something resembling a massage, but that’s not what Charles notices—Charles is arrested, frozen, by the thick ropy scars lancing up and down Erik’s back. He knows those scars. Raven has scars like those, from when she was whipped as a girl for Charles’s mistakes. He knows the pain of them, the brutality with which wounds like those were inflicted, and seeing them on Erik is like a punch to the gut.

Erik turns his head at the sound of the door creaking open and half-smiles at Charles, an expression that shifts to concern once he reads whatever is happening on Charles’s face. “Are you all right?” he asks, sitting up. Pietro tumbles onto the bed from where he was kneeling up to work at Erik’s shoulders, and Erik catches him and steadies him without looking. Wanda waves at him enthusiastically, but Charles is too thrown to return her joyful greeting.

“Your back…” Charles croaks out, and a shadow darts over Erik’s face. A hand drifts to his shoulder to grasp at where the scars begin.

“It’s nothing,” Erik says.

“It’s not _nothing_ ,” Charles snaps. “What happened? Who—?” _Who did this to you?_

“They’re old,” Erik avoids the question, rolling his shoulders, as if he can feel the phantom sting of the whip still.

But Pietro and Wanda have not been schooled in the secret-keeping of personal histories as well as Erik has. It’s Wanda who pipes up, “Papa’s scars were hurting, so we were helping!”

The idea of Erik in pain cuts Charles to the core. “Are you all right?” Charles says, hating the franticness he can hear in his own voice, the weakness on display for any enemy to take advantage of, as though the amount of time he spends with Erik wasn’t sufficient to reveal to the whole world the weak point in his heart’s armor. “Should I call Hank? I’ll get a guard to sit with you and fetch Hank—”

“It’s an old wound, King of Westchester,” Erik protests. “And it hasn’t killed me yet. Sometimes the muscle stiffens in the cold, that’s all. Little hands with nothing better to do are sufficient to relieve the pain.”

Charles crosses to a chair by Erik’s bedside and sits on it heavily, feeling abruptly as though his leg will no longer support his weight. Erik, his hand carding absently through Wanda’s hair, stares back at him. Charles had noticed the scars that peppered his frame the very first moment he had laid eyes on him, covered in blood as he was, feral, teeth bared and eyes cold with killing instinct, but he hadn’t caught a glimpse of his back. Erik doesn’t move to cover himself up—the Genoshans walk around bare-chested and bare-armed in spring and summer, and even now Erik hasn’t internalized Westchesterian norms of modesty. It might feel illicit, being in a room with a half-naked omega, but for the children’s presence and for Charles’s burning, painful curiosity to know who left that web of remembered pain on Erik’s back.

“What happened?” he asks more gently. “Please. I will not be able to sleep tonight if I don’t know.”

Erik’s eyes meet Charles’s, then dart away self-consciously. He might have kept silent forever, in spite of Charles’s pleas, if Pietro had not wriggled off the bed and clambered into Charles’s lap. “Papa’s Father beat him when he was little,” Pietro says. “That’s why Father overthrew him, because he loved Papa and wanted to take him as his mate.”

Charles frowns and is about to ask how a man who claims to love an omega could mistreat him so—but more delicately phrased, for little sensibilities—when Erik makes a harsh, choked sound in the back of his throat. “Pietro,” he says roughly, “come here.”

At once, Pietro returns to the aegis of Erik’s arms. Erik takes a deep breath, as if steeling himself, and says, “I know that’s what the chieftain told you, my darlings, but he lied. My father was a kind and gentle man, and I was never beaten as a child.” Charles has faded into the background of the bedroom; Charles has become an ornament on the wall, for all that he matters to this discussion, Erik bravely and gently stripping away the illusions under which his children grew up. Wanda’s face screws up in confusion. Pietro frowns thoughtfully. “I don’t want you thinking that your grandfather was cruel to me, or would have been to you,” Erik presses on. “He would have loved you. Adored you. You would have been nearly as precious to him as you are to me.”

Pietro and Wanda exchange a look laden with meaning. “Do you still hurt?” Wanda asks after a moment. Erik’s expression crumbles, and Charles knows how he interprets that simple question, the way that _hurt_ balloons out in meaning from just the stretch of scars across muscle into the hazy flood of loss that he had shared with Charles in the forest that day. Wanda is asking after his back; Erik struggles to conceal the wound in his heart. He is still so young, Charles realizes. His parents shouldn’t be dead. His siblings shouldn’t be dead. He shouldn’t be alone in the world, but for his brave little children.

“No, my little robin,” Erik says, without breaking. “My back feels fine now. You did a good job.”

Wanda nods crisply. Pietro puts his head on Erik’s shoulder, and Erik strokes his hair gently before he deposits Pietro onto one of the pillows. Wanda snuggles in next to him, and Erik pulls the covers up to tuck them both in, fussily sweeping away hair, adjusting the collars of their sleep shifts. “Sleep, yes?” he asks. They nod, two little solemn bobbing heads. “I’ll be right with you, once I speak to the King.”

He stands and slips into the sitting room; Charles follows him helplessly, like a fish caught on a hook. When he steps out, Erik is pulling on an tunic that had been lying discarded on the cushions, though he doesn’t bother with the laces, like he can sense that Charles would be more comfortable if he weren’t staring at Erik’s nipples, dark and small and perfectly biteable. He turns around and surveys Charles, his expression still strangely cracked-open and vulnerable, his arms around himself as if to ward off a chill.

Charles says, “That must have been hard for you.”

Erik’s lips thin. “Ask me what you want to ask me, King of Westchester, so that I can sleep.”

Charles wants to drift closer, wants to gently lift aside the flap of the tunic and bare Erik’s chest to his sight, so that he can run questing fingers over his scars, map with his own touch the history of Erik’s pain like bearing witness to it could in some small way alleviate it. But Erik is carefully keeping the width of the sofa between them, so Charles only swallows and says, “Who had you beaten, if not your father?”

“Who else?” Erik says blandly. “My husband.” He bares his teeth in a parody of a grin. “It was only once, if that eases your mind. He preferred to hurt me in other ways.”

“Why?” Charles asks, hating the note of plaintiveness in his voice. He hardly expects an answer, but it’s wrenched out from him anyway; the thought of anyone wanting to hurt Erik, even an evil bastard like Shaw, is intolerable, and makes itself manifest in his question.

Erik glances down at his hands. “I tried to run away,” he says quietly. “It was shortly after my first litter was born… I planned for a month, took Pietro and Wanda and just _ran,_ but of course they caught me. It was stupid to even think I could escape from Creed’s nose, his tracking skills. After that, I gave up. My alpha was merciful enough to spare my children after one escape, I couldn’t risk another.” He swallows. “I went along with the story he told them for much the same reason. But tonight… I just didn’t want you to think badly of my father. I didn’t want that to be the only thing you knew of him.”

Charles thinks of the laughing man who had lifted up Erik’s mother in his powerful, compassionate arms and feels badly that he had been ready to believe that Erik’s father was as barbaric as Shaw, in spite of the memories Erik had shared with him. He drinks in the sight of Erik, and feels awe settle over him—awe of the strength Erik must have had to go along with that story, from the man who _killed_ his doting father and then gave him those scars, for his children’s sake. He carefully doesn’t wonder why _his_ opinion of dead men and women matters so much to Erik. That way lies madness.

Erik sighs tremulously and rubs his arm absently, as though feeling a chill. He smiles another humorless smile. “I was actually trying to cross the border to Westchester,” he says confidingly, as though Charles might find this coincidence funny, of all things, and not tragic.

“Were you,” Charles breathes.

“Don’t flatter yourself. You were closest.” In the gathering darkness, shadows play off of Erik’s cheekbones and brow. Charles hears one of the children snoring softly in the interior bedroom. Erik moves closer to Charles, still curled in on himself, but his eyes are unwavering, his eyes are clear. “I had hoped that the children would be safe here, even if I wasn’t. I know,” he says, before Charles can protest, faintly indulgent, and like he doesn’t really believe his own words, “all the things I’d heard about Westchester mistreating omegas were lies and calumny. Still. I was afraid, not that it mattered, in the end.”

“You ended up here anyway.”

“Yes,” Erik says. “We did.”

Charles reaches out, takes his hand. Erik’s fingers are cold; Charles tries to rub warmth into them. “Do you regret it?” he whispers. “Do you feel safe here?”

“Sometimes,” Erik says softly. He doesn’t clarify which question he’s answering, and Charles doesn’t ask again or use his telepathy to probe further. The moment the questions were hanging in the air, he’d regretted them. Some things he doesn’t need to know.


	16. II: even daughters of the swan can share something of every paddler's heritage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Among School Children," by W.B. Yeats.

ERIK

They’ve been in Westchester for a good ripe handful of months when Jean has a vicious fight with her husband and it all becomes a little clearer.

It’s late. Supper, and Charles, have come and gone. Erik reclines on the couch, watching as Wanda and Pietro play with the miniature castle and figurines Charles had made for them. Wanda yawns and rubs at her eyes; it’s the time of night when they should be migrating to bed. In a few minutes Erik will get up and shoo them bedward. For now, he begins to shade a sketch in the large, leatherbound blank book Charles had given him. It had taken him some time to learn the pencils and inks of Westchester; in Genosha he had used charcoal and vellum. He is out of practice; he hasn’t drawn since his parents were alive. Spread in front of him is a feast as seen through the eyes of a child; but not a Genoshan one. The memory he’s exorcising isn’t his own.

There is a soft murmuring of voices in the hallway, and at once he is poised and alert for danger. It’s probably Charles, but not enough time has passed since it was a man who sent the guards away and made Erik suck his cock for him to truly trust that it’s not someone who means him and his children harm. After a moment, the door opens smoothly, and Jean fairly stumbles inside. He rises to greet her, but something is wrong; her normally sleek sunset hair is in disarray, and she looks around as though not quite sure what she’s doing here. Her eyes are rimmed with red and she is shaking, her hands rubbing back and forth over her upper arms like she is cold. She stares at him; he stares back. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she blurts out after a moment. “I’m disturbing your night. I’ll—I’ll go—”

“Wait,” Erik says with all the command he can muster, a prisoner in a foreign land, and Jean listens. He goes to her, surveys her. “Are you all right?” he asks, concern deepening his voice. She looks—it’s a look he’s never seen on her before, not composed, calculating Jean. She looks _defeated._ It’s the way Angel had looked when Erik had sent her away, he realizes. “Did someone hurt you?”

She shakes her head vehemently. “Scott—” she says, but her voice fails her. “He didn’t hurt me,” she adds weakly when Erik’s eyes flash.

Erik looks at her for a long moment. He doesn’t know why she’s come to him. He doesn’t know where she will go if he turns her away. “Come help me put the children to bed,” he says after a moment, and Jean hesitates, then nods. She takes Wanda; he takes Pietro. Pietro makes his token protest, as usual, but he, too, is rubbing his eyes, and Erik prods at him fondly until he yawns midsentence and looks annoyed at himself for undermining his own effort to stay up. When he stands up, Pietro in his arms, Jean has Wanda balanced on her hip, and together they file into the bedroom.

“Story?” Wanda asks sleepily.

“If you’re still awake after Jean and I finish talking, I’ll tell you a story,” Erik promises. Wanda thinks it over, then nods.

Erik takes the lantern with him when he leads Jean back to the sitting room. He sets it on the low table, and takes a seat on the sofa. Jean drifts into place beside him. The normalcy of dealing with the children has composed her slightly, but she still looks lost, and very much like her own age—younger than Erik, and a good deal more naive. Erik hesitates, then takes her hand. “What happened?” he asks.

“We…” Jean’s fingers knit and unknit. She bites her lip, changes tack entirely. “Do you ever regret it?” she asks abruptly.

“Regret what?” Erik asks, puzzled.

“Having children.”

Erik’s eyebrows raise. “No,” he says bluntly, but when it causes Jean to wilt, he considers a little more carefully. The children are asleep, and he knows the truth is more complicated than that, than the fact that his children are the best part of his life, that his children are everything. He cherishes his children, but their birth is a dark day looming over his nightmares. The only reason he kept himself alive, for so long, was to care for Pietro and Wanda; questions of whether his life had been _worth living_ hadn’t really come into it at all. He carefully doesn’t ask himself whether that’s still true. “I didn’t have a lot of choice,” he points out, not ungently, and Jean shudders.

“Right,” she says quietly. “Right, of course. I’m sorry. You’re right, I should be grateful that I am Westchesterian-born, and so any children that—that I have would be, as well.”

“Perhaps,” Erik says, “if you told me what this conversation was about, I could participate more fully.”

Jean laughs, a sharp little hiccup, as though she’s surprised that she can feel amusement, worked up as she is. “Of course. Yes, of course.” She fixes her gaze on her hands. “Scott and I had a fight,” she says evenly, as though a legal advocate, laying out the facts before her King. “Over children. Scott and I had a fight over children.”

Clearer, Erik thinks, though the situation is far from _clear._ “What of them?”

“Whether we should have them or not.” She closes her eyes, despondent. “He wants them, Erik. He wants children _so_ badly, more than life, and I… I don’t know if I…” She struggles to articulate it, to even fix into words the impossibility of the idea. “What if I can’t? What if I _can’t_? I told him, I’m not ready, I’ve been telling him I’m not ready since we were married years ago, and tonight he snapped at me and asked if I would ever be ready, and I couldn’t answer him.” She looks at Erik, her eyes wet and full of—bewildered self-disgust, Erik diagnoses. “Why couldn’t I answer him? What—what’s wrong with me?”

“Why does something have to be wrong with you?” Erik asks, light.

Jean shakes her head in frustration. “Everyone I know—every omega and beta woman—it comes so _easy_ to them. Irene—Kurt’s mother—all the servants and courtiers—and I came to you because—I’m sorry, it was silly to presume—our situations are so different—but you’re the only one, the _only_ one, who is remotely… like me.” Erik raises an eyebrow. “You worked. I know you fixed weaponry for the soldiers, you—you had a _life_ beyond your children. I have a life now, and I _like_ it—I worked hard for it—I don’t want to give it up, the diplomacy, the trade meetings—”

“Why would you?” Erik asks.

Jean looks at him as if they’re having two different conversations. “I… I would have to, if I got pregnant.”

“Stop writing letters?” Erik asks dubiously. “Stop attending court? Stop _reading?_ ”

“Yes,” Jean says, confused. “The thought of it… months of bedrest, alone, or with only a baby for company… I can’t. The thought of it. I can’t.”

“ _Westchesterians,_ ” Erik murmurs. “You people drive your mothers-to-be insane.” He hesitates. He doesn’t like to make promises—at any moment Charles could have him executed, or more likely, bedded first and then executed—but he forges on, bravely. “If I’m… still around if you decide to have children, I will ensure that you won’t be left alone. But Jean, I meant… why _would_ you want to give up your life? You built it for yourself, and it’s exactly the shape you like. It’s only natural that you want to hang onto it.”

“It… it is? I… I’m a beta woman. It’s _natural_ for me to want… to want…”

Erik frowns severely at her. “You’re _Jean,_ ” he says. “Your preferences are your own, not those of your sex.” He takes her hand. “It’s not just the pregnancy, is it? May I ask why the thought of a child frightens you so? I knew omegas and beta women who were terrified of becoming mothers,” he says, “but often it was because they didn’t know what to do with children, had never been around them. You’re good with Pietro and Wanda, and Kurt and Marie, from what I’ve seen. You would make an excellent mother.”

“ _Children_ are different,” Jean hastens to explain. “Children can speak and tell you what they want and can be reasoned with, mostly. But babies are… their minds are… they don’t _think,_ they just _feel,_ very intensely, all the time, there are no words, just this howling _need_ , and sometimes fascination with something… a face or a voice or a tail.” Erik considers wryly that she was probably experimenting on Kurt. “And Scott doesn’t know if he wants a wet nurse… he wants time with the baby for himself…”

Erik frowns. “A wet nurse?”

“Someone who nurses your child for you?” Jean feels out.

“ _Westchesterians,”_ Erik says again, exasperated. He shakes his head. “We’ll revisit that later. Yes, telepathy and babies sounds… tiring, not to mention the isolation. No wonder you’re hesitant about it.”

Jean looks as though hope, fragile and new-feathered, is unfurling in her ribcage. “You really… you really think so?”

Erik frowns. “Of course. Babies are difficult in the best of times, and with telepathy, it sounds like it would be even harder. No wonder you don’t want to subject yourself to that. Wanda and Pietro gave me a splitting headache every evening, and I couldn’t even hear what they were thinking.”

Jean’s eyes flutter closed. Erik watches with alarm as she breathes unsteadily. “No one’s ever told me that before,” she confides quietly and shyly. “Whenever I asked about it, people told me that I would be fine, that it was natural for me, and I felt… I felt like such a failure… I felt _broken,_ I felt _wrong_ —”

“You’re not,” Erik says firmly. “They’re not for everyone, children. They’re everything you suspect and fear, they’re needy and piteous and mewling and messy—” Jean chokes out a laugh— “and you’re not _broken_ for not wanting them.”

Jean grips Erik’s hand tightly. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I know your children are your life.”

“They are,” Erik agrees, “and I wouldn’t trade them for the world on a string. But that is _my_ disposition, not yours.”

Jean smiles shyly at him, far from the poised, confident woman who has taught him Westchesterian every day. Erik never had a younger sister, but the pang that goes through him when he curls fingers through Jean’s hair, that combination of protectiveness and fondness, is very familiar. “Will you stay up with me a little longer?” she asks. “I’ll ask the kitchens to bring up some tea.”

“That sounds nice,” Erik agrees, and Jean closes her eyes and brings her hand up to her temple to focus her telepathy. When Kitty drops off a tray of tea and orange slices and phases back through the wall, Erik blows gently on his cup and suggests, “Perhaps you would feel more inclined to have children if you had more help.”

Jean stirs sugar into her tea. “I told you how Scott feels about wet nurses…”

Erik makes a face. “That’s not what I meant. If Scott wants children so badly, he should be able to promise that you will be well-supported by him.”

Jean tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Oh,” she says slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that. It’s just… not really what alphas do, is it?”

“As a culture,” Erik says, rolling his eyes, “you Westchesterians are obsessed with this concept of ‘what alphas do,’ ‘what omegas do.’ My father watched us often and never was any less the alpha for it. You will be carrying the child, the least Scott could do for the first ten months is get up in the middle of the night whenever it cries.” He sips his tea. “If you don’t want to bother him,” he says with a smile, “you always could take another paramour.”

Jean knocks over her teacup. Her face flames as red as her hair. “Erik!” she hisses. “That’s… that’s…”

“I’m not saying _get rid of Scott,”_ he reassures her. _Westchesterians_. It’s always best to be clear about these things, Erik has found. “But if you and Scott took another lover, the burden on each of you would be lessened.”

Jean, mopping furiously at the puddle of tea on the tray, has her head down, a sheet of red hair hanging like a curtain concealing her expression. “I, I,” she stammers. “We. I. We. That was. One of the things we fought about.”

She seems disinclined to say more. Erik takes another sip, enjoying the turn this conversation has taken, and then tucks Jean’s hair back behind her ear so he can see her face. She is fixedly not looking at him. “Logan?” he asks.

Jean shoots him a furtive glance. “How—how did you—”

Erik shrugs. Logan sometimes shows up to check on Erik and the children while Jean is teaching him and Scott is watching Pietro and Wanda, and he spends roughly half his time flirting with Jean and the other half antagonizing Scott. He is playful and warm and inviting around them in a way that Erik highly doubts he is with anyone else. Erik has eyes. Just because he is a prisoner does not mean he is a fool. “I think he would be amenable to the idea,” he says helpfully.

Jean clenches her shaking hands. “That’s not…” she tries. “It got all… tangled up with Scott. He wants him, I can tell, but… he would never want me to be… hurt.”

“Hurt?” Erik asks, bemused. “Why would it hurt you? You clearly ache for Logan’s embrace as much as he does.”

Jean doesn’t look at him. “It hurt _you,”_ she says quietly. “When you… lay with more than one alpha.”

“That’s…” Erik sighs heavily and sets down his cup. It seems he’ll have to have the conversation he had with Charles about multiple lovers _again_ with Jean. Westchesterians—they’re so repressed, they think that the only way love can flourish is within the strict dualism of the marriage bed, they’re just so… _unimaginative._ He feels very cosmopolitan and very charitable, introducing the backwards Westchesterians to a world of sexual freedoms that they can hardly imagine. “I didn’t want that, Jean. I didn’t even want to lay with my own husband. It’s different when you _want_ to be loved by the men you take as lovers.” He shrugs, carefully not thinking about what he might want, if he had the freedom to choose it. “Or so I hear.”

Jean can’t look at him. “I—I—”

“It’s a thing you might choose to do,” Erik says gently, laying a hand on her shoulder. She casts a furtive glance at him from under her eyelashes. “Like children. If you choose not to… that’s fine, too, you know.”

“No one’s ever told me that before,” she says. Erik snorts. He can imagine. She combs her fingers through her hair distractedly. “It’s strange, but… when you say it like that, when you tell me I don’t have to… the whole thing seems less frightening.”

“You don’t have to decide now,” Erik says kindly. “You’re young yet. You have many fertile years remaining.” He pauses. “Scott… he treats you well?”

“Yes,” Jean says quickly. “Yes, he’s lovely. It’s just… this is the one thing he wants so badly. More, I think, than he loves me.”

“If he were really good to you, he would listen to your fears,” Erik grumbles.

“It’s hard to articulate them to him,” Jean admits. “It’s easier with you. You _know_. You’re an omega. What does Scott know of… of pregnancy, and infants, and the blood-curdling fear of them?”

“Nothing, if you don’t tell him about it,” Erik says. “Perhaps now that you’ve rehearsed them in my ear, you will be more able to lay your concerns out for him. Bring him to my chambers. If he still won’t listen to you, I’ll beat some sense into him.” Jean presses her fingers against her mouth to hold in a giggle. Erik smiles slightly at her.

“Thank you,” Jean says, and in a flash she’s hugging him, and Erik is startled at first—it’s been a while since an adult touched him with anything but either violence or sex on the mind—but slowly brings his hands up to return the embrace. “You’re a good friend, Erik,” she whispers.

“Is that what we are?” Erik murmurs. “Friends?”

“I’d like to think so, anyway,” Jean says softly. “I know it’s hard… you’re a prisoner, and I’m your protector… or at least I try to be… but… maybe we can be friends anyway.”

A wry smile twists Erik’s mouth. “My protector?”

“If… if Charles were really intent on having you, there wouldn’t be anything I could do,” she admits.

“Why would you even try?”Erik asks curiously.

This is a question that has dogged him since nearly the beginning. He’s thought, for a while, that perhaps there are politics he isn’t aware of which is why Jean and Logan have been so eager to make sure that Charles doesn’t get his dick wet with Erik. But when Jean half-shrugs and answers, it’s all about Erik. “I know that if I were the one who were brought to a foreign land, hurt and vulnerable, that you would take care of me and try to protect me.”

“…I never thought about it like that before.”

“That’s because you don’t expect the world to be as kind to you as you are to it,” Jean tells him gently. She drinks deeply from her tea, her appetite seemingly restored now that they are on surer footing. Erik says nothing. It’s been a long time since he’s thought of himself as _kind_ , but now his mother’s voice rings in his ears. She used to call him her _little kitten_ , kind or fierce in turns _._ She had little animal nicknames for all of them, in fact. He hadn’t realized that it was her spirit reaching out and possessing him to call Wanda _little robin,_ and Pietro _little hummingbird._

“You should bring Scott here and speak to him,” he says, to distract himself. “Tomorrow.”

Jean hums apprehensively. “Tomorrow? I thought I’d give him some time…”

“The sooner you clear this up, the better for everyone,” Erik tells her. Jean nods after a moment. They finish their tea in silence, and Jean presses a platonic kiss to Erik’s forehead before she stands and leaves to allow Erik some sleep. Erik spends a moment fussing with the tea tray before he retreats to his bedroom, where, sure enough, Wanda is snoring and Pietro is still for once in his life, and sinks under the covers.

He sleeps well, and when Scott raises his voice the next day as he and Jean sit at Erik’s study table and Jean shrinks back, Erik merely deposits Wanda in Scott’s lap and he calms immediately, confused at suddenly having a child in his arms. _Thank you,_ Jean mouths to him, and as Scott and Jean draw out a hard-won truce from Westchesterian words he doesn’t understand, he listens to the cadence of their voices and smiles as hostility melts to concern melts to love.


	17. ii: trafficking through ghosts in a constant march toward a better life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Black Parade" by Darrel Alejandro Holnes.

CHARLES

One evening, when Pietro falls asleep in his supper, Erik lets Charles carry the boy to bed.

Erik holds out his hand to Wanda, who, yawning, wraps her little fingers around his thumb and toddles along after him. She’s too tired for a story that night, and Charles bites back his own disappointment—he loves listening to Erik tell stories, sometimes fantastical, sometimes mundane, to send his children off to sleep. Erik is a natural storyteller, plainspoken but imaginative with an instinctive grasp of tension and pacing, and his frame of reference for myths and culture is so different from Charles’s own that each time he hears Erik tell a story, he feels he understands him better. Wanda drifts off as soon as her head impacts the pillow, and Charles takes a moment to sit on the bed, enamored of their sleeping faces.

He strokes Pietro’s hair gently, the way he does with Kurt, and, too late, glances at Erik to see if he’s all right with Charles’s presumption. Erik has come to perch in a chair beside the bed and is observing with calm, watchful eyes. Charles feels a sudden rush of gratitude, that Erik—so protective, so possessive—is allowing him to dote over his babies without hovering.

He fusses over them a little longer, but the sight of them, sleeping peacefully, has reminded him that he has a favor to ask of Erik. Eventually, he stands, ignoring the twinge in his leg, and Erik stands with him, ready to escort him out for the night. “Will you accompany me to my study?” Charles asks softly, so as not to disturb the children. “There’s something on which I want to get your opinion.”

It speaks volumes of the rapport they’ve built that Erik doesn’t immediately assume that Charles is coaxing him into bed; he merely nods and smothers the lantern so that the children can sleep in darkness. Erik moves quietly behind him as they slip out of his chambers and down the long, crooked passageways to the King’s quarters. The guards pay little attention to them; Jean has been taking Erik outside more and more often, and they’re are used to Charles getting a mad idea in his head and bringing Erik along for star-gazing or picnicking. He knows their initial wariness of Erik has faded into familiar apathy; he can sense their disinterest as he skims past their minds.

Charles’s private study, unlike the small audience chamber where he hears private petitions from courtiers, is overflowing with books and papers. Erik, looking amused, clears off a space so he can sit. Charles ought to tell him off. Really, he should. He has a very specific organizational scheme that dictates where each scroll and letter goes, but he’s so charmed by Erik casually making a place for himself that he says nothing. Erik watches him languorously, his eyes tracking Charles as he lights the lamps and settles himself behind the desk, the letters he’d received from Chieftain Frost spread out in front of him.

“The work of a King is never done,” Erik says, a faint smile curling his mouth, only a little mocking.

“Indeed,” Charles grumbles. Erik’s eyes soften. In him, Charles sees genuine understanding. Though as Shaw’s mate, Erik would have had no responsibilities but to bear his children and spread his legs, Charles had seen in the memories Erik had shared with him that he had been raised for a very different role, that he had seen his father and mother lead his clan with a sure hand, that he had grown up thinking he would do the same, rule by his mate’s side, in time.

“What did you want my help with?” Erik asks, simple and generous with his time. Charles hands him Frost’s missives. Erik stiffens when he sees the Genoshan script; he flattens out the curl of the latest letter with finely trembling hands. A pang of something like regret goes through Charles. More than anything, he wants Erik to sleep easily, to eat well, to love his children, to tease and smile. He doesn’t want Erik to suffer the memories of what he left behind, what was taken from him. But recent conversations with Erik have also convinced him that contentment isn’t enough for him; he wants to be helpful, he wants to be _useful._ And here, he can be of use.

Charles watches Erik as he reads through the letters, his brow furrowing when he gets to where Frost has written about murmurs of armed insurrection. He soaks in the situation quietly and thoroughly, sometimes flipping back to earlier letters. When he finishes and places the letters back on Charles’s desk, his hand is barely shaking at all.

“Why am I here, King of Westchester?” Erik asks.

“I had hoped, as a Genoshan, you could provide some insight into this rebellious faction’s mindset,” Charles says, drawing himself upright, retreating into the guise of the King. From the way Erik’s sharp eyes track his movements, he’s not fooling him. 

Erik tilts his head. “Is pride not enough of a motivator for you?” he asks curiously. “Is it so inconceivable that a people, subjugated, should rise against the invading foreign power?”

“You’re young yet,” Charles says kindly. “I am older, and I have found that often there is something more practical at work in the affairs of state than idealism. It is not the young and fiery who murmur of rebellion either, but old and established warriors, those with families and responsibilities. What would entice _you_ to risk your children at the grasping hunger of another war?”

“Not the whole world,” Erik murmurs. He looks at Charles with cool, bright interest. “All right. Tell me what has changed for Genosha since I last beheld it.”

Charles lays out the broad strokes of the tribute, the taxes—as much as the average well-connected warrior might know of them—the prohibition on raiding Westchesterian villages, penalties for plotting against Westchester, the required assessment of gifted individuals so that the most powerful of them can be sent to Westchester to be trained and used on the field of battle. Erik scowls at that, but when Charles tells him that families can—and often do—accompany their gifted ones as emigrants, it fades a little. Sumptuary codes, which causes Erik to roll his eyes—Charles has gathered that Genoshans, clad in furs and leathers, are not so picky about what they wear as Westchesterians. Changes in diet that Frost has noted for him—a certain leanness that accompanies the loss of a war has afflicted the Genoshans, but Charles had sent aid in grain and foul, and Frost has not brought it up since.

Erik has a keen wit and a canny instinct for politics. His questions are probing, and Charles finds himself enjoying this discussion far more than he had expected. Still, every objection Erik raises, Charles settles to his satisfaction, and Erik always grudgingly leans back in his seat when he is ready to concede that perhaps Charles isn’t brutally misgoverning his people. It’s when he gets to the sexual propriety laws, almost as an afterthought, that he sees Erik frown again. “What do you mean, you’ve changed the penalties for social misconduct?” he asks. “Are your rapists not flogged? Are your victims not protected?”

“The penalty for rape remains flogging and exile,” Charles tells him. “What has been made illegal are certain… deviances that create a permissive society. One which,” he says a little more slowly, a little more gently, “allowed for what happened to you.”

Erik hardly seems to notice the reference to his suffering. “Deviances?” he asks suspiciously.

“Openly unnatural arrangements,” Charles clarifies. Erik continues to frown portentously. “Ah…” He struggles for a moment on how to phrase delicately the nature of these relationships. Then again, Erik is not a delicate person. “Overt concubinage. Alphas who have taken two omegas to wife, alphas living with each other, _children_ being raised in these circumstances, being told that this kind of family is all right…”

Erik looks more and more thunderous. “What is wrong with any of that?”

“What is—Erik, it breeds abuse,” Charles says, bewildered. For a moment, he forgets that he is speaking to an omega, and lays out the argument like he would for his advisers. “For omegas to be so devalued that sex is not kept within the marriage bed… in Westchester what happened to you would not be permitted. We are trying to make Genosha safer for omegas.”

“Not a century ago, your omegas could not even read,” Erik retorts. “You lock them away in bedchambers and let them wither for lack of stimulation. Your treatment of omegas is hardly commendable. Perhaps it is Westchester that should adopt Genoshan norms.”

Charles laughs. Erik’s expression does not change. He isn’t joking.

“Erik, you—” Charles hardly knows where to begin. “This law was passed for _you._ To keep what happened to you from ever happening again.”

Erik looks frustrated now. “I didn’t _ask_ for that, and I would never have ever entertained a proposition so short-sighted and selfish. What… happened to me was an aberration. My husband was not simply any warrior, he was Chieftain of the Five Tribes, he was too powerful, politically and physically, for anyone to contest. If you… if _you_ should use me in such a manner, do not tell me that your laws that alphas may not take two lovers would stop you.”

It’s… a fairly simple argument, and yet not one that any of his advisers or generals had brought up in the process of drafting the law. And he… he just hadn’t considered it. It had seemed. Inevitable to him, almost, that Erik had suffered so, that such a horrible thing could happen in the lawless plains of Genosha, and Charles had not stopped to imagine that if Shaw had been King of Westchester, and Erik his mate, he would have still staggered under the burdens of humiliation and violence. The thought that _he_ might take Erik to bed by force and kill Pietro and Wanda for—reasons of succession or jealousy or whatever—was… so unthinkable that he had hardly registered that he _could_ do it, that none of the laws and customs tightly regulating sexual expression could stop him, because he is the King, because law and custom bend to his will. In his study, Erik has—not softened, precisely, but is waiting with a certain patience for Charles to process his words.

“You say your age has given you experience in matters of statecraft,” Erik says, more gently. “Has it also given you experience in matters of the heart? Do you not know any alpha who is mated to another alpha? Who feels for them the tenderness and devotion that he might for an omega mate? Are there not people who take two or three lovers, and love them with the same purity of heart that lies between any alpha and omega couple, or people who take no lovers at all, and are happy and fulfilled?”

“We have all those,” Charles admits. “They must keep their proclivities secret, but yes, the relationships you speak of that I have seen are not always violent or unloving or dangerous.”

“I suppose that will have to do,” Erik mutters, unimpressed with his grudging agreement. Is he never satisfied? Charles thinks with faint exasperation and fondness. “But tell me that you understand that you have drawn a line my people do not recognize, one that marks some relationships as legal and some illicit, some families natural and some to be destroyed. Tell me that their rebellion is comprehensible to you.”

“Is it to you?” Charles asks, as though this were a thought exercise and not a thorny reality which may well cost lives before it’s over.

“If someone took Pietro and Wanda from me because they disapproved of my lover,” Erik says, “I would burn the world down to get them back.”

Charles can’t really protest that. He sighs and scrubs at his face, all kingly authority abruptly falling from his shoulders. Already plans swarm his mind—excuses he will have to make to his ministers, reparations he will have to pay to those who have already been affected by this law, all the minutiae of passing a law and then repealing it. All of a sudden he has ten times more work to deal with this simple bedchamber protocol than he had imagined he would have—but what had he expected, when he had invited a Genoshan to tell him exactly what was wrong with his government? He finds himself smiling wearily but fondly at Erik in spite of himself, and Erik, who seems to sense his concession, smiles back tentatively. “I doubt my council will be rushing to welcome sodamists and the like into their society anytime soon,” he says dryly, “but they may yet agree that peace on the border is more important than strict control over Genoshan bedrooms.”

“I’ll convince you yet to change your ways,” Erik says, and the thing is, Charles doesn’t think he’s joking.

He has a guard escort Erik back to his chambers, but Erik’s scent and presence linger in his study longer after he’s departed. Charles works for a bit, planning out the conversation he is going to have to have tomorrow with Raven and Jean—who had been one of the primary authors of the new bedchamber laws months ago—but his eyes begin to sting in the low candlelight and he sets his quill down and leans back in his chair. If he closes his eyes, he can almost feel Erik’s warmth as though he were still seated across from him, more powerful than the crackle of the fire. Erik’s shadow seems to follow him more and more often these days, revealing itself in moments like these—quiet moments, when he is alone, and wishing that he were not.

Every now and then, Erik does something that shakes Charles out of the familiar affection he’s grown used to and makes him feel as though he’s being cracked open by love all over again. When he’d told Charles what had happened to his other children. When he’d shown Charles sympathy for his rotten childhood. And now, this tense engagement over the future of a nation has overthrown Charles’s heart and head again, again.

The thing is, Erik is _astonishing._ Aside from his unsurpassing beauty, he is clever and sharp-eyed and has kindness to spare for a lonely King, in spite of the violence that has been done to him, in spite of the bitterness that has filled his cup. It was enough when he just wanted Erik sighing beautifully, limbs tangled in his silk bedsheets, body yielding and sweet under his own; it was another thing still when he saw Erik’s gentle, boundless love for his children and longed to be included in that idyllic scene. Bad enough that he wants a barbarian prince as a lover and to bear his heir.

Now he dreams of Erik leaning back in the chair across from him as firelight crowns his hair; his long fingers plucking doctrines of state from Charles’s hand; his shrewd remarks and keen insight. Erik in the seat that has lain empty beside the King’s throne since his stepfather died, Erik lit up by sunlight on the grand balcony and blushing shyly as people shout to him from the courtyard below, Erik in a crown, Erik adorned with the authority that Charles’s love would confer upon him. These are impossible things. Beautiful, impossible things.

He sleeps ill that night; when the servant comes in to bank the fire, he is still staring at the bed’s canopy, trying to shut out the buzzing of dreams he can hear faintly. He is trying not to follow the thin thread that connects him to Erik’s mind to the bed where he lies sleeping with his children, only pulling on his sense of him enough to tell that Erik’s sleep is untouched by nightmares.

Charles’s own dreams are confused; somehow he is both lying in bed waiting mulishly for sleep and looking out his window at the vast darkness spreading beyond, a sentry for something he can’t name. Someone else sleeps in the bed behind him. He is briefly surprised when he opens his eyes and finds that he must have dreamed the sun coming up, for the predawn darkness still veils his bedchamber. He is restless and rises early for reasons he can’t quite articulate.

The council meeting in which he declares that he will be repealing the new restrictions runs long, and so he can’t soothe his headache away with a precious evening in Erik and his children’s company. The next time he sees Erik, he is as lovely and untouchable as ever as he shutters between cold aloofness and tentative smiles. Erik’s advice proves good. The change is not swift, but it is definitive. The rebellions quiet. The border grows still. Spring turns to summer, and Charles falls ever deeper in love.


	18. II: the thousand mouths of my damned thirst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "The Vampire" by Delmira Agustini, translated by Alejandro Cáceres.

ERIK

Erik can pinpoint the exact moment that wary affection becomes… something else.

It’s Pietro’s fault. A sniffle settles in Wanda’s chest; Hank the physician is sent up right away and, as Erik expected, makes the determination that the the chill of the tower at night has wormed its way into her bones and weakened her. Erik spends a few days at her bedside, spooning bland, salted broth between her lips, telling her stories to coax her into sleep, holding her as she sobs out her childish frustration at her tiny, persistent cough. Pietro does his best to be a good, unbothersome child; he plays quietly in the sitting room and only breaks one lantern and one inkwell. Jean watches him when she can, working from Erik’s table instead of her study, but sometimes a diplomat is needed elsewhere in the castle and sometimes a little boy—trying his best though he is—trips into the table leg and splatters ink all over her correspondence.

Erik is used to having to be two places at once when one of his children is sick—after Angel left, he hadn’t had any help at all in Genosha—but it still tires him. One late afternoon, after Wanda falls into a fitful sleep—she coughs in her sleep, too, and often it wakes her, though most of the time she is able to fall asleep again, her little brow furrowed and her fists clenched like it’s a battle—Erik puts his head down on the bed and closes his eyes for just a moment, listening to Pietro babble to Jean and Kunir in the outer room. He ought to get up and relieve Jean of her watch. He will. He’s just going to rest his eyes for a moment.

When he opens them again, the sun no longer spills from the high windows and the candle is guttering in the lantern. He checks on Wanda; she has turned over on her stomach and is breathing evenly, if raspily. Her expression is still fierce, like she’s wrestling every moment of sleep she can from her sickness. He can hear Pietro talking in the other room and wonders if Jean has been with him all evening. He fortifies himself, rises, and steps out to thank her and tell her that he can handle them for the night.

The sitting room has been sacked. The furniture has been pushed aside to create a clearing where the low table usually sits. The cushions have all been reappropriated to construct soft walls leaning against the sofa, and blankets and sheets Erik doesn’t recognize are draped over the structure that someone has helped Pietro build, so that only a pair of adult feet are visible sticking out from under the mass of bedding. Charles’s crutch, leaning against a wall, clearly indicates who Pietro’s co-conspirator is. Erik can hear his voice now, low and amused, melting with Pietro’s higher, excited chirp, and see their shadows move across the blanket, lit somehow from within.

He finds a likely flap and sticks his head inside the… blanket tent, and is greeted with a sight that astonishes him.

Charles has spread out an array of snacks and sweets around a flickering lantern. Pietro, his mouth stuffed full with a jam pastry, waves when he sees Erik. Charles smiles ruefully at him. “You were asleep when I arrived with supper,” he says, low and warm. Against his will, Erik feels a shiver go through him at that tone, which curls around his spine like a warm hand at his back. “Neither of us wanted to wake you, so we thought we would just entertain each other.”

“By tearing apart the sitting room?” Erik asks blankly.

“We’re having a picnic!” Pietro says around the mouthful of pastry.

“Is that what this is,” Erik says.

“Come,” Charles says, that same terrible warmth in his voice. “Sit.”

Erik kneels down next to him, and immediately Pietro scrambles into his lap. He presses his head against Erik’s shoulder, and Erik wonders with a pang if he’s been neglecting his son to care for his daughter. But Pietro’s chatter is as bright as ever, and he seems mostly concerned with trying to stuff himself with as many sweets as possible. Erik cards gentle fingers through Pietro’s silvery hair and Pietro leans back in his arms, a heavy content weight.

“Thank you,” Erik says quietly. Charles smiles as though it’s nothing.

“You should eat too,” he says. He hands Erik a honey-smeared biscuit and Erik takes a cautious nibble on it. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the half-full trays you’ve been sending back to the kitchen.” Erik has trouble eating when his children are struggling, and Wanda’s lack of appetite these last few days have meant that he has been eating less, too. Charles watches him fondly as he begrudgingly takes a larger bite. “How is Wanda?” he asks solicitously.

“Her cough will persist for a while, but she is awake more often than before.”

“Good, good,” Charles says, and the thing is, he genuinely seems to mean it. Erik tries to reconcile himself to the idea that Charles has developed an affection for the children in and of themselves, that these visits to his chambers continue even when Erik is too busy to entertain him. He is the King—and yet he found Erik sleeping and, rather than wake him, chose to spend the evening playing with his young son. Through his gifts and the patience with which he always dealt with the twins, Erik had known that Charles was fond of them—but this is more than the fondness one might have for a pet or a favored servant. This is something close to devotion.

Charles regales them with a story from his childhood about stealing this sweet from the market here, a legend from a distant land about how a foreign god made this fruit there, as though it is _his_ duty to entertain them, and not Erik’s. At some point, Pietro falls into a doze, and it is just Erik that Charles is speaking to, and Erik knows that he should stand, that he should put Pietro to bed, but he is a warm little bundle in his arms, and Erik is loathe to break the spell cast by the lantern-light flickering against the cotton walls of the makeshift tent. 

“And you must try this,” Charles is saying of a handful of spheres carved out of strange yellow flesh. “The fruit is from Carnelia, we only import it three weeks out of the year, but it is lovely—sweet and tart, a herald of summer.” And without thinking, Charles brings one up to Erik’s lips.

They stare at each other for a moment. Color floods Charles’s face when he realizes his presumption, but before he can draw his hand away, Erik unthinkingly leans forward and takes the fruit from Charles’s fingers with his teeth. It is no different, he tries to tell himself sternly, from Charles pressing a kiss to his hand. But the way Charles is _watching_ him—with stunned heat, with barely-controlled ferocity—the taste of it bursts on his tongue, as sour and brilliant as Charles had promised, and Erik chews contemplatively, feeling heat burn high in his own cheeks. He licks his lips to catch every trace of juice, and Charles’s gaze sears into him.

Wordlessly, Charles offers him another. Erik’s lips brush against the tips of Charles’s fingers, and they both shudder.

The lamplight yawns between them. Erik blinks, and the plate of fruit is suddenly empty. Charles shakes his head slightly, as if surfacing from underwater, and looks with new eyes at the decimated feast, the candle burning down, Pietro drooling on Erik’s shoulder. “Bed,” Charles blurts out, and then, closing his eyes as though appalled at his own stupidity, “you should take the boy to bed, I mean.”

Erik casts a glance at the room, all in shambles, and the empty and half-eaten plates on the rug. “I’ll have a handful of servants come up to put this away,” Charles reassures him. “You’ve exhausted yourself taking care of the children. Let me worry about this.”

Erik nods. It’s a challenge to hold Pietro and crawl out of the tent at the same time, but Pietro only mumbles his dissatisfaction and smushes his face further into the curl of Erik’s neck. Charles follows them up, a little wobbly without his crutch, and Erik is briefly caught in the wake of his gaze. They are near enough to each other that Erik can feel his warmth. Alphas burn hot.

Charles leans down and presses a kiss against Pietro’s cheek. He draws back, just for a moment, studying Erik’s expression. And then he leans forward and presses another kiss to Erik’s forehead.

Erik trembles at the gentle brush of lips against his skin, but in less than a moment it is over, and Charles is at the door. Erik watches him go. It takes a moment for him to gather himself enough to bring Pietro back to the bedroom and lay him down on the opposite side of the bed from Wanda, who shows no signs of having woken since he had left her. He takes a moment to sit down at the foot of the bed and gather himself before he crawls into bed beside them, to try and untangle the hot, throbbing mess of feeling in his chest.

He finds himself imagining Charles pressing further, stealing a kiss from his lips, putting his arms around Erik’s body. In the children’s absence, drawing Erik into bed. He’s familiar with alphas looking at him with lust, but something about Charles’s lust feels different from Shaw’s, makes _him_ feel different. When Shaw had swept his gaze over him and Erik had known he was imagining Erik’s lips around his cock or his body writhing in his lap, Erik had felt at first disgusted when he was younger, and then blankly tired. When Charles had first started to pursue him, he’d felt the same exhaustion that lay under his more conscious concerns of how his children would be treated. But what he feels now when Charles looks at him is something entirely different. It is not quite comfortable, but it is not… unpleasant, either. It’s not fear that he feels when Charles looks at him like that, not exactly, not anymore, but it’s not _unlike_ fear either. When Charles looks at him, Erik feels like he doesn’t fit in his skin quite right, he feels like he is suspended in time, waiting for Charles to touch him or turn away.

For so long he hadn’t had the luxury of feeling anything beyond a grim determination that his children should thrive, he’s not sure he recognizes these impulses in himself. Is unsure whether it’s like anything he’s _ever_ felt, even when his parents were alive. 

For all his thoughts about Charles’s lips against his skin, it’s the memory of Charles kissing Pietro good-night that lingers with him as he sinks into sleep. Shaw never paid much attention to the children.

(That night, for the first time in his adult life, Erik dreams with _want_ about someone. Charles’s broad hands at his waist, his smile against his hair. His sure motion as he presses Erik back against a bed somewhere, the weight of his body over him as he pushes into him, soothing Erik’s discomfort away with kisses, the hot drugging pleasure of a knot catching inside him. Erik wakes early, dawn spilling across his pillow, and stares at the light shafting in from the window as though he can crawl back into his dreams through it. As though if he tried hard enough, he could return to that imagined moment in which Charles had smiled at him, triumphant, yes, but also endlessly fond, also gently protective.

Erik is twenty-three years old. He should know better than to believe in lovely lies, like kind alphas who look at him and don’t see damaged goods or a hole to fuck, a used-up breeder or a trade good, but something that might be worth love and care, something that might one day be beautiful.)  
  
  
  
CHARLES

After that first consultation, Charles continues to go to Erik with minor questions of Genoshan governance now and then. Erik shoots down Charles’s idea for a school where Genoshan children can be educated in Westchesterian values by pointing out that Genoshan parents would rather keep their children close and that Westchester, while it excels in curiosities like astronomy and philosophy, cannot teach them the skills they need to survive on the plains like fighting and riding and plant identification and camaraderie. Charles convinces Erik that setting up a court to mediate Genoshan-Westchesterian disputes is not an exercise in futility, but a way of demonstrating to Genoshans that they are valued members of a common society, not necessarily lesser to Westchesterian citizens. Matters of war, of sex, of Chieftain Frost’s right to rule—these questions they skirt around, aware that however cozy and private an environment Charles’s study is, a gulf still yawns between them as great as the sea.

It’s a slippery slope. He finds himself complaining about or processing the events of court in Erik’s company, where once he might have turned to Raven or Jean or—anyone but a foreign prince being held prisoner after his country lost a war. Sometimes Erik is visibly bored, but often he has something—some insight, some way of phrasing things that Charles had never considered before, that makes coming to him with these issues a delight as well as a relief. When he finds himself inviting Erik to his study after supper to discuss import duties on non-fish seastock with the Isle of the Sky, he knows he’s gone too far—concubines or consorts might hear petitions in their capacities to change their lords’ minds with bedroom tricks, but Erik has never needed to lie beside him and whisper soft, sultry words to influence his policy—but Erik makes a wry comment about why anyone would pay extra for crabs that makes Charles laugh, and he finds himself leading Erik up to his study again, and again, and again.

On these evenings in his study, the rest of the world falls away, and he and Erik can speak freely, without the always-attentive presence of little ears and eyes. It’s intoxicating. It’s a treat for himself that Charles savors, doling it out sparsely, perhaps once a week, lest he glut himself on Erik’s presence. He thinks Erik feels it too, if the way he lingers in Charles’s company instead of returning to his chambers is any indication.

And one night, a question about whether the Crown ought to repossess the property of a landlady who is behind on her taxes melts into Charles just grousing about the landlords’ guild in a way he can’t to his council. (He reflects that if Erik were a courtier, he would have enough information by now about Charles’s personal feelings and relationships with major political players to blackmail him quite thoroughly.) The guild has been arguing in favor of a tax decrease, one that Charles has been wary to grant. Erik listens carefully to the nuggets of real information buried in Charles’s general whining about the guildmaster’s oily manners and unsavory alliances, and eventually asks, “Why do they feel entitled to a tax decrease now? You said that you eliminated notary fees four years ago. Surely they ought to content themselves with that?”

“Ah, yes, that,” Charles sighs. “I spent all day completing the paperwork to officially open the city to Genoshan refugees. They are anticipating a large influx of tenants and wish to be compensated for it.”

Something about that causes Erik to fall quiet. When Charles glances at him expectantly, he finds a complicated expression dancing across his face. “You have opened the border to Genoshan refugees?” Erik asks finally.

“Yes,” Charles says. Hm. Apparently that particular headache hadn’t been one of the things he’d been complaining to Erik about yesterday. “I sent grain, but I know that sort of aid only goes so far, so if any Genoshans wish to seek employment to fill their bellies in the city, they are welcome to it,” he explains.

It’s not that simple, of course. He’s been dealing all day with the ramifications of the townspeople’s displeasure—increasing night patrols, speaking to the aldermen, and of course this dispute with the landlords’ guild. But it _is_ simple in that a people he bears some responsibility for is suffering, and it is in his power to ameliorate it, so he will. Erik’s poise, his fierce defense of his people, has convinced Charles that they are worthy of such treatment. Perhaps that’s why he finds it surprising that he has never mentioned this particular decision to Erik; Erik has played such an outsize role in convincing Charles to treat the Genoshans with respect and dignity. 

“Why?” Erik asks now, his gaze searching, as though he is trying to read the truth of Charles from his expression. “Why would you do that?”

“Why do you continue to expect the worst of me?” Charles asks rhetorically in answer. Erik says nothing. In the conversational lull, Charles sighs and tips his head back, rubbing ineffectually at the pain at his brow. He will have to meet with the guildmaster again tomorrow. Just the thought sends a twinge through him.

Erik’s chair scrapes back. Charles hears him rise and move to Charles’s side of the desk, not really thinking about it, but then Erik presses his fingers to the bridge of Charles’s nose, gently rubbing circles to soothe the pain away, and Charles’s eyes fly open in startlement. Erik still wears an unreadable, wary expression. “What are you doing?” Charles asks, striving to keep his voice light and not accusatory.

“You carry your stress in your brow,” Erik says, and perhaps it is an answer and perhaps it is not. His voice is very low and warm. His fingers slow; his palm flattens against the curve of Charles’s cheek. “And you shouldn’t hunch over your papers like that,” he continues to scold. “It makes your shoulders stiff and your crutch difficult to use.”

If Erik were not so close, were not _touching him,_ maybe Charles would have the strength to smile and say, _Yes, doctor,_ maybe he would be able to do something but stare dumbly back. Erik’s fingers trace the faint presence of his stubble. God, Charles can _smell_ him. He smells like winter, not the cold barrenness of it but the unexpected life that dwells in its heart. He smells intoxicating, _omega_ and Erik, and not for the first time he finds himself imagining, in spite of his best efforts, what Erik-in-heat might smell like, that heady, riotous scent multiplied tenfold, what it might be like to drink that scent from his lips, to lick it from his cunt.

“Lean forward,” Erik says. Wordlessly, thoughtlessly, barely aware of his own body, Charles obeys.

Erik slips behind him and with sure, strong hands digs his fingers into Charles’s shoulders. At first it is painful, his strung-tight muscles protesting, but soon it melts into deep satisfaction. Under Erik’s touch, he floats away; his consciousness narrows to the points where Erik is touching him, and the slow draining of tension from his body. A jealous corner of his mind wonders whether Erik had done this for Shaw, but such dark thoughts seem very distant, and evaporate as Erik pushes his thumbs into the base of Charles’s neck, drawing out the knots that have lived there for so long that he has stopped noticing them.

Charles moans. Erik laughs, a soft sound, barely more than a breath. “Good?” he murmurs. Charles isn’t sure his mouth remembers how to make sounds in response.

Time sloughs away.

Eventually, Erik’s movements slow. Charles registers that Erik is stroking his thumb over the strip of skin on the back of his neck between collar and hairline, that his other hand is slowly petting Charles’s shoulderblade, not a massage anymore but just the lingering pull between two people who have grown accustomed to touching. Without thinking, he turns fully around and catches Erik’s hand in his own. His long, elegant fingers, the breadth of his palm, his callouses. Charles memorizes it all effortlessly and looks up into Erik’s face.

There’s something unguarded and breakable about the way Erik looks at him in that moment. Charles still cannot read lust or affection or disgust or disinterest in his features—perhaps Erik does not even know what he feels himself—but he gets the distinct sense that there is something fragile and flayed-open trembling in his hands, something that must be treated with infinite care and tenderness. Charles tugs on Erik’s hand and he goes easily, until he has to prop his knee up on the cushion of Charles’s chair between his thighs. He is almost in Charles’s lap now, and his scent, his _scent._ Charles cups his face, tries not to breathe too deeply for fear he might lose himself and do something unforgiveable.

“Erik,” Charles says, just for the pleasure of saying his name, for the joy of seeing Erik’s lashes flutter as he tilts his head and drinks it in.

“My lord,” Erik murmurs.

Charles shakes his head, runs a thumb over Erik’s lips, mapping their topography, committing to memory the way they part under his touch, the way his breath ghosts against his skin. “I would like to hear my name from your lips,” he confesses.

His thumb is still resting at the corner of Erik’s mouth when he sighs, _“Charles_ ,” and so he feels the faint purse of his lips, the way he shapes the vowels like finely crafted steel. Charles shudders at the way Erik’s accent wraps around the syllables. He aches. He wants. Something shifts in Erik’s eyes.

So Charles leans forward and kisses him.

Erik _melts_ into him. Charles runs his hand up Erik’s back, tracing the curve of his spine, coaxes soft sweet noises from him, barely more than sighs or gasps, that he swallows down. Erik opens shyly into the kiss, lets Charles taste him until he’s gasping for breath, and then Charles pulls back—Erik sways forward as if chasing his mouth—only to bury his nose into the hollow of Erik’s throat, breathing deeply, scenting him. He could die here, Erik clasped safely in his arms, or he could live forever like this, he could sustain himself on Erik’s mouth and scent and skin alone. Erik curls into Charles’s embrace like he’s heat-seeking, a docility to his bearing that is unfamiliar but intoxicating. Charles kisses him again. It is just as heady and heartbreaking as the first one.

As he pulls away again, Erik’s eyes stutter open. He looks half drugged with arousal. “Charles,” he whispers again, and Charles feels himself make a noise that is half a purr and half a growl and kisses him once more to keep Erik from saying his name in that _voice,_ tempting him to _take._ Erik shudders and lets Charles in, and without even meaning to, Charles sinks into Erik’s mind, far past the usual connection between them he uses to translate.

Erik’s thoughts, normally so ordered and deliberate, have gone soft-edged and hazy. He is half consumed with Charles’s grip on his hipbone, half distracted by Charles’s kisses. He wishes, a bit, that Charles would hold him down, that his grip would turn rough and bruising, so Charles threads a hand through his hair and holds him still so that all he can do is accept Charles’s kisses, and the hint of pain sends pleasure throbbing through their shared mindspace. Erik is fully settled in his lap now, and he can feel Charles’s growing hardness digging into the crease of his thigh. He is carefully not thinking about it, not imagining unlacing Charles’s breeches and taking out his cock, discovering his length and thickness, he is not dwelling on what might happen next. He is absorbed in the practicalities of touch and taste.

And as for Charles—he has wanted for so long to possess Erik. To show him, with each kiss and each touch, how safe he would be in Charles’s bed, how fiercely Charles would protect him, his honor, his heart, his happiness; to teach him that pleasure can be an act of love instead of violence. He luxuriates in the desire lacing through Erik’s mind in return, a wordless, directionless _want._ He memorizes the texture of Erik’s skin-hunger.

But. Though Erik’s passion is a pure, clear note ringing throughout his mind, there is something diffuse and intractable keeping him from giving in entirely. It takes a moment for Charles to figure out what it is, but when he does, he summons ever scrap of self-restraint he has and pulls back.

It’s fear.

Not for himself, but for Pietro and Wanda. The ever-present worry that sleeps beside Erik’s heart that if he lets Charles have his way, if Charles sires his own children on Erik, he might see Pietro and Wanda as a threat. At once, Charles glimpses how often Erik has nursed this fear at night, worrying at it and turning over and over the question of what would keep his children safe, because, on the other hand, perhaps it was the only way to truly grasp security for himself and his family, perhaps Charles would repay him with even greater affection and let him raise his children in peace. Erik had told himself, on those late nights, that Charles is not like Shaw, and had let that bring him some comfort; but there are still a host of things Charles could do to his little family while meeting the slim standard of being better than Shaw. He still doesn’t feel safe in Charles’s company. Not quite. Not yet.

“Charles?” Erik breathes, confused, as Charles firmly puts space between their bodies.

It is difficult; the only thing he wants is to rut against Erik. But Charles steels himself and says, as gently as the rasp in his voice will allow, “We can’t.”

Erik’s lashes flicker uncertainly. “Do you not want…?”

“I always want you,” Charles tells him, lets the honesty of it ring down the mental bond between them. “My darling. My brave warrior. But you’re still afraid.”

Erik shakes his head. “No, I—I’m not afraid. I don’t mind. You can do anything you want to me. I can take it.”

Charles’s heart lurches painfully in his chest. “I know,” he says gently. “I know you’re strong. I know you could take it. I know that, perhaps, you might even want it. But until you come to me without fear, without reservation… we can’t.” He lets his knuckles drift down the path of Erik’s cheekbone, memorizing the sharp shadows of his face. Hoping that he will get the opportunity to trace his elegant features again soon. “When you truly have no reason to say yes but pleasure and desire… then I will take you to my bed, and make you feel as though you have never been touched before.”

Erik shudders, and Charles is tempted, sorely tempted. But in his selfishness, he wants all of Erik, everything that Erik has to give, including the parts of him that he had concealed so carefully from Shaw, that he had protected and tended in the chambers of his soul where Shaw could not reach: his lust, his consent, his free and unforced and fierce and abundant love.

Gently, Charles pushes him off his lap, and Erik goes. “Thank you,” he says. “For the massage.”

Erik nods briskly. “I should… I should return to my children.”

“Yes,” Charles murmurs. “One of the guards will escort you.”

Erik pulls away. Absent his heat, the cold soaks into Charles’s bones, makes his bad leg twinge. The shadows seem very dark suddenly. Charles struggles to draw the mantle of the King back over his shoulders, to soften the loneliness biting at his heels. But at the door, before he opens it and steps outside and becomes a prisoner again, Erik pauses, turns back and says softly, “Good night, my lord.”

“Good dreams, Erik,” Charles says.

And then he is gone.

Charles watches the door close behind him, the only remnant of Erik’s presence his humming, turbulent thoughts moving down the hall and back toward the North Tower. After a long moment, he tips his head back and sighs. He still aches in his trousers, but it is a dull, distant feeling, and he is more tired than aroused. To be so close to what he has wanted for so long, and then to push it away of his own free will—exhausting. He looks listlessly at his preparations for the resumption of negotiations tomorrow, then pushes the papers aside and stands, ready to fall into bed and perhaps dream about how else tonight might have gone.

Because he is not a good man, he lets the tether between his mind and Erik’s play out, so that he can feel the hum of it, like background noise, even when Erik is half the castle away in his own bed. He doesn’t try to parse the tenor of Erik’s thoughts, just quietly soaks in the motion of them as Erik undresses, checks on the children, and crawls into bed. He waits for the quiet _tick_ of Erik’s conscious thoughts to melt into sleep and soothe Charles’s own fevered mind, but it is a long time before either of them finds real rest. Instead, for much of the night, they lie in their separate beds, as close to each other as if they were lying in the same one, but also deeply, absolutely apart.


	19. II: arch yourself deliberately wanting the warm press of my lips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: referenced past rape and infanticide.
> 
> Title from "Desire," by Sudeep Sen.

ERIK

Summer dawns hotter than Erik has ever really felt it before. Though the sun may scorch the plains of Genosha more fiercely, the walls of the castle trap the warm air and a sticky torpor descends over everything. Erik lets Jean and Scott take the children out to play in the gardens more often, where at least they can catch a fresh breeze, and takes the quiet as an opportunity to think. Meditation is a luxury for omegas with children, when every waking moment is absorbed in a tempest of entertaining and keeping an eye out for hidden dangers; often the only moments he had been able to think about something else had been in the shadow-time after Pietro and Wanda had fallen asleep but before Erik had followed them into dreams.

Now, he takes advantage of the solitude to rehearse that night over and over again in his head. Charles’s palpable surprise when Erik had touched him; his hands on his hip and threading through his hair, holding him in place; the loveliness of his kisses; the woody, alpha scent of him. Erik’s… yes, disappointment, when Charles had pulled away.

He’d said he hadn’t wanted him to be afraid.

That was Charles all over, Erik thought. It was sweet, but it betrayed a fundamental lack of understanding of what it was to be afraid. The fear had become a part of him as surely as his bones and children; it wasn’t something he could conquer, it wasn’t something he could give up just because a handsome, clever alpha asked him to. Even if Erik wanted to oblige him. And oh, how he wanted.

Charles comes to dinner and beams at Pietro and Wanda as they tell him about the destruction they’d wreaked on the gardens that day and what they’d learned from Jean. Charles continues to call him to his study and speak with him on governance and politics and anything else that enters his mind. Charles continues to look at him like he is the sun and Charles’s continued existence relies on his daily presence, like he will wither in the absence of Erik’s smiles. And Erik—

One night, as Pietro and Wanda snore beside him, he realizes that he can recall every time he’s ever made Charles laugh that rich, delighted laugh. That he has been saving them and tucking them in his heart to bear up against harder times all along.

Sometimes, when they are alone, Charles looks at him, and Erik thinks, _This is it_ — that Charles will kiss him again, or maybe more. That Charles’s hunger will finally surge past the bounds of his control and he will devour him, and that he might quite like being devoured. But the moment always passes, and Charles always sends him on his way with nothing more than a caress of thumb over his knuckles, or a moment where he tips Erik’s chin up and just studies him, as though Erik will have changed by the time he sees him again. And Erik is left confused, and frustrated, and aching for something he cannot name.

A week passes like that, then two. Charles, Erik thinks, is waiting for him to— _be ready_ , that vague and indefinable phrase. The night Erik makes sure that his children are sleeping soundly and slips past the dozing guards, he is not quite sure if he has accomplished that _._ But he does know that he has a question that only Charles can answer. And that he cannot wait any longer for Charles to look at him and deem him _ready._

He’s walked these halls with Charles or a guard by his side many times, but the halls, seemingly so narrow-straight but terminating in unexpected places, bristling with branching corridors and hidden alcoves, have their own language that he has not quite mastered, though he is learning, as with Westchesterian. He has to turn around once when he realizes he’s on his way to the kitchens, not the main tower, but it’s not long before he’s striding past the guards stationed outside of Charles’s chambers as though he belongs there, as though his lack of an escort isn’t suspicious at all. The guards rustle uneasily, but they know him, and just the sheer fact that they don’t expect an omega prisoner to barge into the King’s chambers without his approval goes a long way in authorizing Erik’s presence, and his self-assurance does the rest. They open the heavy wooden doors for him, and Erik steps into the King’s bedchambers as though he belongs there, and doesn’t flinch when the doors creak closed behind him.

He’s never entered the King’s private quarters before, and it surprises him—though, after a moment of thought, he realizes it shouldn’t—that they aren’t much larger than the rooms he shares with the children. There is a quiet reading nook in one corner, set under a large, wide double window, and a lounging area with a table not unlike the one at which Erik learns Westchesterian every day. Set in the center is a large, imposing bed, canopied with silks. From the lamplight blazing from the table, Erik can see that the sheets are a luxurious dark blue, lined with gold. Charles’s colors.

He can hear Charles in the bath, the faint sound of him sinking his hands in a basin of water, then a splash as he washes his face. He’s probably shaving. Erik glances down at his clothes, wondering if he should have prettified himself for this. No, he decides after a moment. Charles doesn’t like artifice. By chance, he’s wearing something Charles had gifted him with anyway, a tunic in the same deep blue as the sheets, embroidered with subtle frets of gold along the hem and collar. He’s wearing Charles’s colors too. Erik settles on the bed and waits.

When Charles steps out of the bath, he is wiping at his face and jaw with a small towel. He doesn’t notice Erik for a moment, which is good, because he’s completely nude. Erik is far from a blushing virgin, but his heart stutters in his chest as he takes in the breadth of Charles’s shoulders—concealed by day by his robes of state and expensive jackets—the hard muscular frame of his upper body and arms, his cock, soft and flushed from the heat of his bath. Erik is seized by a keen desire to take Charles’s cock into his mouth, to suckle at it and bring it to full hardness, to taste him and take him down to the root so that Charles will curse and tighten his fingers in his hair, to swallow his pulsing release like it is all he is made for. The image is so powerful that his mouth waters. Erik has never given much thought to the act of sucking an alpha off before, except to feel vaguely grateful when Shaw would let him use his mouth if his cunt was too sore. For the first time, he understands its appeal for the omega, not just the alpha.

He forcefully shuts those thoughts down. There will be time enough to see whether the reality of being touched gently, being used kindly, lives up to his budding fantasies later. Charles still hasn’t noticed him, but Erik is impassive and watchful again, with only the simmering memory of heat below his navel to remind him of his weakness.

Charles glances up as he gives his face one last swipe with the towel. For a moment, his eyes skip over Erik, but they snap to him so suddenly his gaze is almost a physical weight. Charles makes a shocked, inarticulate noise at the back of his throat, but doesn’t move to cover himself. Erik tilts his head appreciatively, but keeps his eyes on Charles’s face.

“God above, Erik,” Charles says, the towel dangling loosely from his fingers. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you unhappy to see me?” Erik says, soft.

Charles’s eyes flit to where a sumptuously soft-looking silk robe is thrown carelessly over a bedpost. Though he looks like he sorely wants to, he doesn’t ask for Erik to hand it to him. “Surprised, perhaps,” he says wryly. “Never unhappy. Should I even ask how you managed to get past the guards?”

Erik shrugs. Though Charles is the one who is naked, Erik feels strangely vulnerable, looking Charles in the eye; he twists the fabric of the bedspread with his fingers, not sure where to put his hands. Courage, he tells himself. He has to know. He feels cool resolve settle over him like armor, like the armor he hasn’t worn since his parents died. 

Charles is watching him with sharp, seeking eyes. “Erik?” he asks quietly.

Erik slips off the bed— _Charles’s bed_ —and ghosts toward him. Charles’s breath catches as Erik steps into his orbit, his lips part slightly and Erik can almost _feel_ the way his lust for Erik—always present, but sometimes dormant—stirs and roars to blazing life. Without thinking, Erik brings his hand up and cups Charles’s face, his thumb pressing lightly against those parted lips. Charles’s breath catches beneath his touch; his eyes have gone dark, his irises thin rims of blue. “Erik,” he sighs, barely a noise, more a whisper of lips against the pad of Erik’s thumb than anything else.

“You want me,” Erik says, brutal, certain.

Charles crowds closer, his hands going to Erik’s hips, and grinds his cock—the beginnings of desire making him just a little harder, just a little thicker, than he was—into Erik’s thigh, so that he can feel it through his clothes. Erik can smell his arousal, a primal scent that makes him want to feel the weight of an alpha over him, the fingers of an alpha inside him. “Of course I want you,” Charles growls.

Erik sets his lips to the architecture of Charles’s ear. “I would be so good for you,” he says. “I would make you feel so good. I’ll suck you off every night and morning, I’ll let you bury your aches and cares in my cunt, I’ll carry your babes and let you come on my child-swollen belly.” Charles is breathing harshly now, his grip on Erik’s hip painful. Erik luxuriates in it, in the feeling of being wanted so badly he has finger-shaped bruises on his skin to show for it. “I just want one thing in return.”

“Name it,” Charles rasps out. He is very hard now, his own hips moving helplessly in little compulsive jerks. “Ah, Erik— _Erik_ —”

“I’ll go willingly to your bed if you swear the children will be safe,” Erik says.

Charles doesn’t stiffen exactly, he doesn’t pull away, but he does sigh, low and sad, and his grip on Erik slackens. “Do you doubt it of me?” he asks. “Am I still such a stranger to you, that you think you even have to ask this of me?”

“I want assurances,” Erik says. “Not just honeyed words and implications.”

“I love them,” Charles vows. “They are as dear to me as my own would-be sister’s children.” He is quiet for a moment, then sweeps gentle fingers over Erik’s cheek. He struggles not to lean into it, to fix Charles with an unflinching, clear-eyed gaze, as though his whole world depends on his ability to sift truth from lies, which it does. “You must know I love them. You must know I love _you_ , and would never torment you through them, not for the promise of heaven itself.”

Erik brings a hand up to where Charles is stroking his face, wraps his fingers around Charles’s, and drags his hand down. Charles’s touch is distracting, and Erik cannot afford distraction. Not now. “Feelings change,” he says. “Whores and slaves fall in and out of favor.” Charles’s expression crumples, but Erik presses on, firm, relentless. “On your honor. I know a faithless dog of Westchester has no honor, but swear to me by whatever your people hold sacred that my children will be safe.”

“How can I reassure you that as long as it is in my power, your family will be protected, whether you are in my bed or not, without it sounding false, a play to see you submit to me?” Charles asks, genuine pain in his voice. “I will swear if you like, but will that let you rest? Will that bring you peace?”

“It’s a start,” Erik says. It doesn’t need to be perfect trust between them. It can be as small and trivial as a seed growing in the soul, so long as it is real.

“Very well.” Charles drinks him in for a long moment, his face serious, but something warm and devoted in the faint lines around his eyes. He brings his hands up to frame Erik’s face, and for a breathless moment Erik thinks that he’s going to kiss him, but instead he draws him down and presses a kiss to his forehead, like a King would. “Erik Shaw of Genosha, I swear to you, by all that is holy and right, by my throne and my crown, by my power and my pride, your children will be safe in my lands. Your heart will be safe in my hands.”

Erik hears the words out loud and in his head, with all the weight of a royal edict. There’s a warm sense of invitation in Charles’s mind pressed against his, and Erik, unhesitatingly, suddenly desperate, plummets headlong into that warmth. Charles’s mind catches him up and enfolds him in currents of emotion, all so present and undeniable that Erik wants to cry out under the burden of them. Fierce protectiveness and keen longing, open admiration and lush contentment in his company, and yes, just as Charles had promised, _love_ , that hardy, soaring thing that Erik knows well as a parent, that he once knew well as a child, that he, perhaps, is learning once again as an omega—they break over him like waves, they carry him off in their force.

And not just for him. For Pietro, Charles’s adoration shines out brightly. He has captured every adventure he and Pietro have played out together between the pages of his memory, preserved them like pressed flowers. Charles is bewitched by the way Pietro, bold, curious Pietro, has no idea that children should be seen and not heard, the way he imperiously captures Charles’s hand and drags him along through the garden, a little prince, bolder with his king as a prisoner than even the King’s own ward had been at that age. Pietro gleams like a little sun, whose rays when breaking through clouds makes the dark, cool halls of the castle new again. And Wanda has Charles’s watchful dedication, Wanda who reminds him so of Jean in her youth, her quiet cleverness, her sensitive, changeable moods. How she says what she thinks and how she gives comfort and love to people in pain around her and how she had lunged at his soldiers with red light crackling from her hands ready to defend Erik. If Pietro is a sun, Wanda is the weather, tempestuous, unpredictable… life-sustaining.

Erik catches a glimpse of Charles’s surety that Genoshans must be right, in this at least—descent passes through the dam. Because these two tiny sparks of light are everything of Erik, his strength and his courage, his love and his tenderness, and nothing of that monster. Charles knows that if anything were to happen to Erik, he would be devastated, but the children would want for nothing—would know they are loved—that they are precious—every day of their lives.

Charles’s hand brushes Erik’s cheek, and, still adrift in Charles’s mind, it takes Erik a moment to realize that he is crying.

Charles withdraws from Erik’s feverish, grasping thoughts gently, until Erik can just barely feel his presence at the margins of his mind. Slowly, he settles back into his body. His eyes are wet, his breaths catch in his throat, and without saying a word Charles draws him close, lets Erik bury his face in his shoulder. The children are safe. The children are _safe_ now, in a way they haven’t been since they were born, between the death of their brother and the threats Shaw continued to make to keep Erik in line. Charles has sworn. (Charles _loves_ them.)

Charles pets at Erik’s hair, makes low soothing sounds deep in his chest, and Erik takes a wild moment to wonder at the way in which his complete loss of composure hasn’t seemed to diminish this alpha’s interest in him at all.

Eventually, Erik quiets and stops hiding his face in Charles’s shoulder as his breaths level out. Charles has started to scent him, nosing against Erik’s temple, not demanding or overbearing, but a comfort as warm as his own scent in Erik’s nose. Erik rests his cheek on Charles’s collarbone, runs his fingers rhythmically down his bare sternum. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

Charles says nothing in return, but a warm flare at the edges of Erik’s mind implies that there is no need to thank him for any small thing he could do for Erik, much less the truth. Erik closes his eyes and turns his lips to the column of Charles’s throat. “Let’s go to bed,” he breathes.

Charles stills. He runs his fingers through Erik’s hair again before he asks, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Charles takes his hand and leads him to the bed. They settle on its edge, and Charles’s fingers hesitate at the fastenings of Erik’s tunic as he looks at him for guidance. Erik smiles and tilts his head so that the catch at his neck is more accessible, and with careful, delicate movements Charles undresses him. Shaw had stripped him before, of course, but this feels different, the way Charles presses a reverent kiss to his uncovered shoulder, the way he drinks in the sight of Erik’s newly bared skin. He runs a soothing thumb over Erik’s inner thigh as he unfastens the laces of his breeches, as though he knows how strange it all is for him, how overwhelming he finds this gentleness.

“Lie back,” he says, though Erik is still in his underclothes. Uncertainly, Erik scoots back onto the bed and lies down, and Charles climbs in after him and drags the blanket over them. And then he—settles in, tucks Erik into his body, as though he doesn’t plan to fuck him at _all_ , as though all his palpable _want_ over the last few months has been about Erik falling asleep untouched in his arms. Erik’s confusion must be buzzing loudly, because Charles chuckles into Erik’s crown, “For tonight, I would like to hold you, just like this. Is that all right.”

Erik nods, because he thinks the words might come out mangled, and slowly, muscle by muscle, relaxes into Charles’s embrace. He’s not sure when exactly the furnace-heat of Charles’s body and the exhausting knowledge that he and his are _safe_ conspire to drag him down into sleep, but when he wakes, Charles is still watching him, something like wonderment in his eyes.


	20. II: your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: memories of/references to rape.
> 
> Title from "Detail of the Woods" by Richard Siken.

CHARLES

It’s not a dream.

He opens his eyes and breathes in air redolent with Erik’s delicious, dizzying scent. It’s still dark outside, but the dim glow of the banked fire sneaks in through gaps in the bed’s curtains, and the contours of Erik’s face are just barely comprehensible. The dark sweep of his eyelashes and the slight part of his lips in sleep. He is curled into Charles, as if seeking his heat, and Charles is content to pore over his details, to memorize his architecture. This is real, he reminds himself. Erik, in his bed, in his arms—this is _real_.

Erik wakes before the sun does, and Charles watches, enthralled, as he snuffles and smushes his face against Charles’s shoulder. His eyes slit open, dark blue in the pre-dawn, and he squints at Charles crossly. Charles feels a laugh rumble in his chest and he can’t stop himself from running a finger over the seam of Erik’s lips, which pucker into a scowl under his touch.

“You can sleep some more,” Charles offers generously. Erik visibly battles back a yawn.

“Are you always so cheerful at such unseasonable hours?” he grumbles.

“When I have a beautiful omega in my bed,” Charles counters.

Erik smiles almost shyly, then hides it by burying his face in the pillow. “Your roguish flattery won’t work on me, King of Westchester,” he says, muffled.

“Please,” Charles says coaxingly, “in the privacy of the bedchamber, use my familiar name.”

Erik’s eye peeks out from the rise of the pillow. “Charles,” he murmurs, and it still sends a thrill through him, makes Charles reach out greedily and draw him close, press their bodies together, leave an impassioned kiss on Erik’s crown. Erik is making soft, wordless noises that have Charles’s cock thickening, he is running a curious hand down Charles’s chest, and Charles has never wanted so badly in his _life_ but more than he wants to get his cock inside Erik, he wants to kiss him, deep, potent kisses, he wants to catch those noises Erik is making in his mouth and swallow them. He leans over and captures Erik’s lips, and Erik’s hand flutters up to steady himself against Charles’s jaw.

Charles rolls over until Erik is trapped beneath him, his head tilted back as he submits beautifully to Charles’s kisses. Charles kisses him, and kisses him, and slowly the urgent ache in his cock fades to a duller, ignorable throb. The world narrows to Erik’s fingers, sliding up and down his back, and Erik’s mouth, sweet and pliant under his. Time drips away like honey from the comb; at some point, Charles finds himself sprawled over Erik’s chest, listening to the fast but even thrum of his heart. Tentatively, Erik draws his fingers through Charles’s graying hair, like Charles had done last night, and Charles watches as Erik’s features grow clearer and brighter as the light of the dawn reinforces the light of the night fire.

Eventually, Charles has to rise. He has court this morning, and then a meeting with a lord who has been recalcitrant with his taxes and military service, and then a review of the castle’s guard. Erik doesn’t stir from his bed, quietly watching him dress with those changeable eyes, until Charles sits on the bed next to him and says, “You should go, too. Pietro and Wanda will wake soon, if they haven’t already, and wonder where you are.”

Erik nods and recovers his clothes from the floor. Charles watches him greedily, heat flaring in his veins at the way anyone who didn’t know better might think he was getting redressed after a night of passion—but that will come soon enough. When Erik scowls at the stays of his tunic, Charles steps close, says, “Let me,” and ties neat, overlapping bows to hold the seams closed. When he’s done, Erik catches his hands with his own before he can draw away and holds them, like he just wants to snatch another moment with him before they part for the day. Charles empathizes.

Erik runs a thumb over Charles’s knuckles, and Charles rasps out, “Go. Before I never let you leave again.”

Erik breathes shakily and pulls away. Charles watches as he steals another look back before he slips out the door. And then Charles folds his heart back into his cracked-open ribcage, straightens his back in preparation for his crown and crutch, and reminds himself that Kings can’t flee their responsibilities to loll all day in the arms of pretty foreign omega princes. It only mostly works.

His distraction is clear throughout the day. He will be hearing a petition or speaking to Raven when, all at once, memory will break over him, and Erik’s scent and taste and bright, keen eyes will cause him to lose the thread of what he is saying. He finds himself daydreaming through the review of the castle guard, wondering if he can coax the kitchens into doing up something special for dinner that evening, if Erik will give him the slightly patronizing smile that Charles shouldn’t find so damnably attractive or if he will appreciate the effort or if he might even light up with that lovely rare blush. Erik is so unpredictable, after all, Erik continues to surprise and astound him, and Charles adores it.

Like a naughty child, he avoids Jean, who by now _must_ know from the gossip around the castle that Erik spent the night in the King’s chambers. He will need all his faculties to be able to marshal an argument in his own defense against her, he can’t possibly do it while his wits are haring off every other moment in Erik’s direction.

The review of the guards goes long—Logan, the bastard, has been eying him suspiciously all day, and takes a break in formation as an opportunity to start the whole affair over again. Jean, Charles remembers belatedly, is not the only one unimpressed with his… attachment to Erik. By the time he manages to escape his duties, it’s late and the sun is sinking below the horizon. The kitchens, Charles discovers when he stops by, are serving bread and a light summer soup. He asks for a platter of fresh berry tarts to be added to the tray being sent up to Erik’s chambers, and follows Kitty up the North Tower stairs.

Kitty enters first, making cheerful noises at the twins and asking Erik in slow, careful Westchesterian how his day was, and Charles pauses in the shadow of the door to luxuriate briefly in the spark of Erik’s mind, so close now, as he sounds out, “Good, Kitty, thank you.” Erik isn’t looking in their direction; he’s got Wanda in his lap and is finishing up a neat fishtail braid. Charles leans his head against the doorframe and just drinks him in. Once, he’d said to Erik that it would be enough to merely look upon him. Now that he’s felt Erik’s lips against his, he’s not sure that’s true anymore—but it certainly is sweet to simply stand back and admire him.

Pietro, hovering over the food Kitty is sitting out, notices him first. “Charles!” he says joyfully, and runs against his good leg. Charles pats him fondly, but he can’t help but notice as Erik’s head jerks up, as his fingers slip on the braid, as his burning eyes—green in the waning sunlight—meet Charles’s own. A moment later, he turns back to Wanda, who is fidgeting impatiently, and makes soft _almost done_ noises, but Charles can see it—the faint hint of pinkness on his cheeks. He’s not unaffected, either, Charles notes smugly.

“Hello, Pietro,” he says. “Have you been good today?”

“Yes and Wanda’s a big liar,” Pietro says, too-quickly.

“Am not!” Wanda shouts from across the room. Erik sighs.

“He ripped her plait out,” Erik says wearily as he ties her braid off. He sets down Wanda, who surges forward to give Charles a hug hello of her own. 

“That doesn’t sound very good,” Charles says mock-sternly to Pietro as he pets Wanda’s head, gently, so as not to disturb her new braid.

“It wasn’t,” Erik says, and stands to pry Pietro and Wanda away from Charles. Sometime after laying out supper, Kitty had disappeared through the wall to give them some privacy. She’s probably heard the rumors as well. Charles drifts farther into the room and hears the guards shut the door behind them. “But everyone has apologized and no one is angry anymore.”

Erik is preoccupied with the children, so when Charles takes his hand, he startles. His eyes fly to Charles, who brings up Erik’s hand and presses a courtly kiss to the back of it, like he has done so many times before, but charged with a new and potent sense of what Erik looks like under his clothes. “And you?” Charles murmurs. “Have you been good today?”

Heat licks across Erik's cheeks. His shoulders hunch protectively and he looks away, but he doesn't pull back; instead, his fingers tighten around Charles's as if to keep him there, and he licks his lips as though he can't help himself, and when he looks back at Charles, through the shadow of his eyelashes, he manages a tiny, inviting smile. Charmed, Charles allows Erik to lead him by the hand to his customary seat on a divan next to the low table. Pietro is already thieving bread rolls, the little sneak. Before Charles can reach for a bowl, Erik is there, ladling soup for him, selecting a crust of bread for him, like a consort might do, like a husband might do. Charles takes the bowl and, a little afraid of what he might say, stuffs most of a bread chunk into his mouth.

Supper seems to stretch on forever, though by the time they finish the soup is just cooling. Wanda asks about how the soup is made. Erik doesn't look at Charles, not even when Charles is explaining to Wanda that the soup simmers slowly over the course of two days. When Wanda is slurping contemplatively, Charles reaches out with his telepathy, just to soothe the little anxious voice clucking that Erik has thought twice of coming to him last night, that he regrets waking up in his arms, that he's not ready, that he's not willing.

Erik is thinking about Charles's hands.

Charles's hands on his hips, warm through the cloth of Erik's tunic. Charles's hand on the back of his neck, guiding the tilt of Erik's head as he kisses him. Charles's fingers gently undoing the clasp at Erik's throat, stroking down the bared skin of Erik's neck when he pulls back the fabric. Charles drawing the canopy's curtains closed around them. Charles's touch as Erik breaks the surface of a dream and falls back into his body, his arm over his waist, his thumb rubbing small circles into Erik's skin. The memories are so vivid that Charles briefly forgets that he is sitting in Erik's suite with his supper in front of him, Pietro and Wanda across from him, he is back there with Erik, pressing hungry fingers to scars and smooth, unmarred skin alike. 

"Are you _listening_ to me," Pietro says loudly, and Charles jerks back into the present.

Pietro, in the middle of a story about—his dolls? the gardens?—scowls at his distraction. Charles feels the warmth of those memories slip from Erik's mind as he drags his attention back to Pietro, as he runs a soothing hand over his head and murmurs, "Sorry, my little hummingbird, I'm listening." 

Conversation drags on, lapsing into silence until the children prod one of them into saying something—sometimes literally, with their sharp little fingers jammed between ribs—but… it's not uncomfortable. Though it feels like something momentous hinges on what will happen when the meal is over and the children sent to bed, watching Erik sigh his usual sigh and wipe at the crumbs and berry jam on Pietro's face has its own charm, its own preciousness as a moment. After Kitty collects the dishes, the children sit and play with Charles's old rocking horse, and Erik sits next to him on the divan and neither of them say anything to each other. Every now and then Charles will catch the whisper of a thought from Erik, a memory or a dream—Erik replaying, over and over, what it felt like to be _safe_ , to be _held_. At one point, when Pietro is pretending that the rocking horse has trampled him, Charles can feel the smile softening Erik's features, and he reaches out and takes his hand. Erik's thoughts turn mellow and happy-gold at the touch.

When the children begin to droop, Erik sweeps them up and carries them into the bedchamber. Charles lingers by the doorway, watching Erik coax them into their sleep clothes and settle them in bed. Wanda curls up around her soft rag doll. Pietro yawns hugely and all but buries his head in the pillow. It's not the first time Charles has watched as Erik has tucked his children in after dinner, but this is different. Erik tells them a story, like he always does, and doesn't glance at Charles once, and Charles lets the words float past him, not even bothering to mentally translate, just listening to the rise and fall of Erik's voice as he recounts some well-worn folktale about a bear and the moon.

When their breathing grows deep and regular, Erik murmurs something in Genoshan, something that sounds like "good night" and the endearments he uses on Pietro and Wanda—his little birds, wild and precious in the palm—and gently fusses with the covers, drawing the blanket up to Wanda's chin, brushing away flyaway hair from Pietro's face. He snuffs out the lamp so that the only light screening the room is from the lamps and fires in the main room. Erik draws the door closed as he steps back into the sitting room, passes him, sets the heavy brass swan-shaped lamp down on a chest of drawers. His hand lingers on the handle, and he still doesn't look at Charles. His mind is strung tense and tight as a bow.

From behind him, Charles slips his arms around his waist. He feels Erik exhale, faint, tremulous, but some of the mental tension Charles can feel melts away. Almost helplessly, Charles scents along Erik's neck, tasting the faint sharp sweetness of his sweat, his scent, under his collar. With gentle fingers, he tilts Erik's chin to the side so he can kiss him properly. 

Erik's eyes are closed, his expression serene, unshuttered. Charles, so close now he can tell that Erik isn't breathing, brushes his thumb over Erik's lower lip, coaxes his mouth open. Erik's lashes flutter at the touch, but he still doesn't look. He still doesn't look.

When Charles does drag a kiss from him—bliss. Heat and sweetness and _bliss_.

It's just as breathtaking and painful as kissing Erik last night. Erik, at first so sweet, so pliant, kisses back with increasing intensity, surges back against Charles until he's digging fingers into his arms and all but devouring him in return. Erik kisses like he goes through life—his spirit, the strength of his soul, blazes sharply in every motion, every murmur, every sigh. All fierce feeling and unwillingness to yield, but when he does it's like nothing else in the world, to have a creature like this in your power, in your grasp.

When Charles pulls back, panting for breath, Erik is looking at him again, his eyes open, torch-blue, his pupils dark and huge. His gaze is fixed, unwavering, like there is nothing else in the world but Charles.  
  
  
  
ERIK

The room that Pietro and Wanda had been meant to sleep in, before the Westchesterians had accepted that they would just bed down with Erik, is dark and sparsely kept. The children use it sometimes when they play hiding games, and Erik keeps it as tidy as the other rooms. Unlike in the King's bedchambers, there are no windows, no summer moonlight to brighten the way. Wrapped up in Erik, kissing him headily, Charles stumbles backward into a set of drawers and hisses when a corner prods him in the side. Erik slips out to the main room, re-lights the lamp with shaking hands, still dizzy and drunk on Charles's alpha scent.

In the lamplight, Charles's face is mainly a study of shadow. He watches hungrily, with dark, devouring eyes, as Erik sets the lamp down by the bed, as he crosses back into Charles's waiting arms. Charles kisses him again until his eyes flutter closed and he grasps helplessly at Charles's surcoat, until heat sings through him and he can feel himself slickening. Charles grasps his hip and Erik can't help but grind against him, Charles's own hardness against his aching cock; something that feels half like panic and half like desperation surges through him, as his mind both tries to imagine Charles inside of him and skitters away from the thought.

Charles backs him against the footboard, and when Erik pulls away to gasp for breath, he guides him back, chases his mouth, drinks him down. It's not at all like how Shaw kissed him, how his generals kissed him—as a show for people watching or as an easy assertion of his rights over Erik's body. Charles kisses him like he can't help himself, like he can't get enough of the way Erik tastes, of his stuttering breath against Charles's lips, of the little desperate sounds he can't hold back.

Gently, so gently that Erik doesn't even notice at first, Charles's fingers whisper against his tunic, the line of small pearl buttons marching down the seam. Erik tugs at Charles’s surcoat, the only article of clothing he’s wearing that is relatively straightforward to remove, and Charles chuckles into his mouth and slips out of it. Kindly, like soothing a nervous horse, Charles distracts Erik with touches as he undresses him. A sweet little bite just below his ear as he pulls off his tunic, not hard enough to bruise or redden, but enough to send a shock of startling pleasure through Erik's blood. A hand at the back of his neck that grips him hard, makes him want to go limp and easy for the alpha holding him, to bare his throat and spread his legs and take whatever Charles wants to give him. His tunic flutters to the floor. Charles grips Erik's cock through his leggings before he starts to undo the laces, and only the hand on the back of Erik's neck keeps him from writhing hard enough to make it difficult for Charles. Erik's gasp breaks off into a moan.

"Stay still, lovely," Charles murmurs against his pulse. "That's it, that's it." Erik forces his trembling limbs to still as Charles bares him to the air and shadow. Charles brushes his fingers against Erik's shaft, then slides down and dips his thumb into Erik's clenching, already wet, already ready hole, swallows up the noise of feverish frustration Erik makes with his mouth. "Beautiful," Charles whispers, seeming a little dazed, a little addled, from just grazing against Erik's heat and wetness. "Glorious. You have no idea, do you. No idea."

No, Erik wants to say, Charles is the one who has no idea. Erik is a common whore, Erik is a poor survivor, Erik couldn't even protect his own children. There is nothing lovely and beautiful and glorious about him at all. But the way Charles looks at him in the subdued yellow lamplight, the way Charles kisses him quiet and pliant—for a moment, he is nineteen again, and Shaw has never touched him, no one has ever touched him, and he can see himself the way Charles sees him. Inviting. Beguiling. Omega. Something that might blossom for the right alpha. Erik shoves his head in the pillows to hide from it, to conceal his heated face from Charles's too-knowing eyes. No one has ever called him beautiful and meant it. Like Charles can't even see the scars.

Charles lets him hide, just skims his knuckles across Erik's cheekbone, and moves away to let him breathe. The rustle of silk and brocade reaches him as Charles undresses. Erik gathers himself and peeks up, catches a glimpse of Charles's back—broader than one might guess, the robes and royal embroidery hiding the power of his frame—gleaming golden in the low light. Erik closes his eyes again as Charles settles back onto the bed, gasps silently as warm, strong arms draw him close, his scarred back pressed against Charles's chest. Charles presses tiny sips of kisses to the long line of his throat. His alpha scent surrounds Erik. His knees fall apart instinctively.

"You're so sweet for me," Charles sighs. The press of his thick, full cock against Erik's hip makes him swallow mutely. "So ungrudging with your body. What do you want, darling?"

Erik has to lick his lips to get his throat to work. "I want to make you feel good," he rasps.

"Ah, Erik, you do, you do." Charles's hand comes up to grip Erik's throat. Not threateningly, not hard, just enough to make him keen, to bring tears to his eyes. "I want _you_ to feel good. Has it ever been good for you? Have you ever just been… carried away by pleasure? The way you deserve?"

"No," Erik whispers. He doesn't say the rest. The pain, the shame, and even when it felt good, the constant awareness that it was his family's murderer giving him pleasure. Charles kisses his ear to bring him out of those thoughts, and Erik blinks them away obediently. "I've never wanted… not until you."

Charles's breath catches. Finally he says, low, taut with desire, "Get on your knees. Spread your legs."

Feeling faintly lightheaded with want, with the ache low at the base of his spine that he’s familiar with from heats, the one that tells him he needs to be fucked, Erik shifts until he’s on his hands and knees on the impiously soft bed. He's not sure he could do it if Charles didn't keep touching him, his hands steady and firm, tracing his spine, spanning his ribcage, grounding him with his grip on Erik's hip. It's so different. It's all so different. The mattress so butter-soft that his knees sink into the batting—feathers and down over wool, Charles had told him once—the sense of enclosure and safety from the stone walls around him, Charles's scent permeating everything, chasing away his ghosts. Charles trails kisses down his spine. Erik is dizzy, suspended between the drum of his heartbeat and the shudder of his breath, as Charles's breath skates over his hole, which wetly clenches and winks at the attention.

"You've no idea," Charles says again, "what a delicious temptation you are," and then his hands are spreading Erik's buttocks and his lips are flush against his hole and his tongue is fluttering out to taste him and Erik screams. Slick gushes from him. Charles groans eagerly, forces his tongue past Erik's sphincter, even as slick drools over his lips and down his chin. His stubble scratches at the sensitive skin around Erik's hole. Erik's keening melts away into sobs, as he pushes back against the sensation blindly, as he tilts his ass up in an almost primitive attempt to entice the alpha into just stuffing him full of cock already.

With fingers and tongue, Charles works him open, gently but firmly, utterly indifferent to Erik's increasingly loud and broken pleas. He praises Erik as though he is a natural philosopher with a particularly fine specimen: "Yes, that's right, darling, open up. You can take another. You _can_. Good, I knew you'd be good for me. The way your arch your back and spread your knees wider for me—exquisite. _Yes_. I've never seen anyone take it as well as you, little omega." But the fierce possession and want in his voice belie his affected detachment. He's aching for consummation, too. His fingers shake where they're buried in Erik's hole.

"Fuck me," Erik moans, pushing his hips back as Charles tries to draw his fingers back out, chasing the sensation of being stretched, of being touched _there_. "Please, please, I'll die."

"Greedy," Charles says, amused. There is a hint of something else though in his voice, something almost like awe. "Shhhh. Hush. I know how strong you are. You can take it. At least for a little longer." He presses a kiss to the small of Erik's back that somehow sends a shock of pleasure through him as consuming as the stretch of his muscles around four fingers. Erik buries his wet face into the pillow. Even Shaw never drew tears from him. Rarely, anyway. But this—this slow, meticulous care—it disarms him, it destroys him. He feels like a holy thing.

Charles tucks his thumb into the cradle of his fingers and eases them inside, up to the knuckle, and Erik clenches around them with a delirious cry. "Erik," Charles rasps out, his composure shattered. "Erik, Erik."

"Please please please," Erik babbles, not even sure what he's asking for anymore. "Gods and goddess, please. Charles, _please_." Charles’s other hand, knuckles stroking the curve of his hipbone so gently it gives lie to the relentless torment he is putting Erik through, grounds him, steadies him, the one real thing he can hang onto. Charles licks at a line of sweat crawling down Erik's back. Erik's whole consciousness has been reduced down to the points where Charles is touching him, the fingers in his ass and the hand at his hip and the tongue and lips playing over his skin, and his pulsing, awful need to be used.

Erik's back arches as Charles gently works his fingers a little farther inside of him. "All right," Charles whispers. "All right."

He pulls his fingers out and pulls back, and Erik feels wrung-out and bereft, but then his hands, even the one dripping with slick, are at Erik's hips again, pulling gently until understanding finally sinks through Erik's lust-dazzled skull and he turns over. It's hard to concentrate on Charles's face. He seems to waver in the shadow and lamplight. But his eyes—blue and dark—they trace Erik's open, gasping mouth, the flush over his cheeks, his half-lidded eyes. Erik is taken apart by those eyes, as expertly and cleanly as he was taken apart by the fingers inside him.

"Like this," Charles says. "I want to look at you."

Like this, on his back, he's exposed. Vulnerable. But this is Charles. Erik closes his eyes, tilts his head back, fists the sheets in an attempt to gain some kind of purchase, spreads his legs as wide as they will go. Charles settles between his knees, slides his fingers through the mess between Erik's legs and uses it to slick himself up. His hand, warm and sure, settles on Erik's inner thigh to spread him just a little wider.

Erik stops breathing when he feels the head of Charles's cock nudging at his entrance. Then Charles presses in, slowly, _slowly_ , and all the breath wrenches out of him in a scream.

Charles is—Charles is—

Charles is painfully, unbearably _tender_ with him. Erik _knows_ , in the way that he knows that meteors move in a different time than humans do, that sex is not _necessarily_ painful, it just usually was with Shaw. But he hasn't wanted it in a while, and even when he had… _desires_ , he'd never. Never realized. That it could feel like this. 

Charles sinks into him like this moment will never end, like they will just go on, entwined, Charles delving deeper and deeper into him, forever, and Erik's eyes roll back into his head and his cunt throbs beatifically around Charles's cock, and the sobbing mewls coming from him grow desperate and shattered. He clenches and shakes and moans and when Charles can go no further, when Erik is so full he think he might burst, Charles grips his cock with the same gentle care that he had used when easing into Erik, and overstimulated, half-blind with pleasure, Erik comes messily all over his hand.

Charles doesn't seem angry—he chuckles, licks up a bit of Erik's come, wipes the rest on the luxurious sheets—but Erik barely has a moment to come down from the high when Charles is pulling out and thrusting back in and all the thoughts fly from his head. His fingers scrabble at Charles's shoulders. He's forgotten—or maybe he had never known in the first place—how delicious it is to feel full, to be overstuffed and brimming with alpha. Charles's hips rock steadily into him, past the point of overstimulation, past the threshold when it starts to feel good again, and Erik whimpers high in his throat as he feels his cunt accept the cock coaxing him open, his body yielding to the intrusion. Charles whispers things against his skin. Lovely things, about how good he is, about how well he's doing, about how intoxicating he feels squirming against him. Erik has never felt so— _so_ —

Charles adjusts the angle, slides his arm under the bend of Erik's knee to hitch him up higher, and Erik yowls, toes curling involuntarily, as Charles's cock sinks more deeply into him. Charles laughs against his skin. Erik's whole world has narrowed down to Charles and pleasure so bright it is almost pain, his satisfied smirk, the way his hair has fallen into his eyes, the flex of his arm as he drives into him. Charles's voice and the distinctive rhythm of his breath, keeping him _here_ , present, in this moment, making sure that Erik has no doubt who he is in bed with, who is touching him as sweetly, using him as gently, as a virgin bride. It's Charles, Charles who killed his family's murderer, Charles who was so careful and patient and reverent, Charles who loves his children—Charles who loves _him_.

He can hardly comprehend it, but. It has the gleam of truth to it.

Erik, so raw and vicious and beaten down. Finding love.

A frisson of emotion that he suspects is not his own goes through him, though his heart and body are in such turmoil he can't be sure. Above him, Charles presses his forehead against Erik's, somehow more tender and adoring than a kiss. Erik is so unsettled, made so wild, from the feeling of Charles wrapped around him that he hardly notices his second orgasm. It surges over him like a crack of lightning and is gone. 

"Beautiful," Charles breathes. "Maddening."

Erik, overwhelmed, bites at the meat of Charles's shoulder, digs his heel into his back. "I knew," he slurs, "you wanted me. You ached for me. You waited for me. I'm here. Take me. Knot me. Have me. Please."

Charles makes a vicious noise in the back of his throat and fucks into Erik so hard that he sees stars. Erik's moan dribbles out of him. The heat of Charles over him, the damp slick running down his thighs, the gladness that he's never felt before at being able to give pleasure to an alpha—it has the quality of a dream, of a fantasy. As the knot slowly swells at the base of Charles's cock, his thrusts grow less smooth, his breath catches with effort. Erik rolls his head back and deliriously imagines what it will feel like when the knot still forcing its way into and out of him catches on his rim, fills him with seed. Marks him indelibly as Charles's.

Charles is still mouthing words into the skin stretched across his collarbones, but Erik can barely hear them over the telepathic litany beating against the walls of his mind, surging against the contours of his thoughts. _Darling. Omega. Erik. Lover, beloved, let me in._

 _"Please,"_ Erik whispers, and tries to relax around the stretch of the knot nudging at his rim.

_Let me in._

Charles grinds his thick, swelling knot against his hole, and slowly, agonizingly, the widest part of it sinks past the resistance of Erik's muscles, and from there it all happens very quickly. Erik gasps breathlessly as his cunt clenches, an involuntary response to the knot, as his insides flood with Charles's come. Erik's third orgasm tears its way through his body like a blaze, the full feeling of being well-bred, the knot still stretching him and tying him to Charles, Charles's panting breaths and his shaking arms and the fierce maelstrom of emotion surging between them, possessive kiss-bruises scattered over Erik's throat and shoulders, the weight and heat of Charles's body over him, searing, sheltering—it all built up and tumbles him over the edge.

It takes him a while to return to his body. To slowly become aware of the soreness of his muscles, his heavy limbs, the tug of the knot in his ass whenever Charles shifts. Charles solicitously arranges their bodies so that his weight is mostly off of Erik and his trembling thighs can relax against Charles's hips. Erik turns his head to look at the lamp, its guttering flame—how long have they been lost in each other?—and listen to their breathing harmonize.

 _Beautiful. Luminous. Beloved_ , Charles's mind whispers. In the physical world, he runs his thumb against Erik's hairline and murmurs, "Better even than my most treasured fantasies."

A lump rises in Erik's throat and, horrified, he shuts his eyes lest traitorous, mystifying tears spill. Charles must be able to sense the change in his scent, though, and he props himself up on his forearms, gives them a little bit of space. The touch of cold makes Erik feel even more fragile and at sea. "Erik?" Charles asks, worry surging into his voice. "I—are you all right? Did I—"

Erik shakes his head violently, not trusting his voice to betray him. He grasps for Charles's mind desperately before he can withdraw into himself, leave him even colder and more uncertain. _I just—_ he thinks, bewildered, _I'm so—I didn't know it could be like that._

Charles runs soothing fingers through his hair. _Good?_

 _Happy,_ Erik replies unthinkingly, and he colors red at this part of himself he didn't mean to reveal, but Charles smiles, slow and sweet, and kisses him.

Kissing Charles without the heat of desire flashing between them is different. These are languorous kisses, lulling instead of exciting. Charles's mind is working away, Erik can sense the churn of protectiveness-devotion-constancy-awe, the silvery flash of thoughts like _I will make you happy for as long as I am able_ running between them like bright-scaled fish in a stream, but he can tell that these thoughts and feelings are not meant for him to see, so he lets them go. He is tired—the kind of exhaustion you get after crying, after grieving, after giving up a secret, the kind of exhaustion you get when you feel truly safe—so he tilts his head back to let Charles kiss at his neck and falls sideways into sleep.

His sleep is dreamless, mostly—a sense of what-could-be here, a memory of warmth there. He doesn't wake, just sighs, when the knot goes down and Charles pulls out gingerly. For the first time in a long time, it is not a noise or the sun or the children that wake him, but the natural end of his dreams, and he stirs in a haze of softness and sex-soreness and alpha scent.

When he blinks awake, the first thing he registers is blue eyes.  
  
  
  
END PART TWO.

**Author's Note:**

> I hate [flightinflame.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame)
> 
> I am at tumblr as [homoethics](https://homoethics.tumblr.com/). Please comment; constructive criticism welcome.


End file.
